Saturday, October 6, 2007

Be Part Of A Designing Public

Source : Weekend TODAY, October 6, 2007

Until Oct 17, you can have a say in how the new National Gallery should look















In the remaking of Singapore as a global city, the shape of this project will depend not just on the Government, but on the average Singaporean, too.

City Hall and the former Supreme Court building will be transformed into the new National Art Gallery and the proposals for the design may have already been shortlisted. Still, there is time between now and early next year before the architect is commissioned.

And the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts hopes people will weigh in with their views on the type of building they think would be worthy to take its place in front of the Padang.

Such feedback will be considered before the decision on the final design of the Gallery is made. To that end, a public exhibition of the three contending design ideas, as well as the rest of the 111 design entries from 29 countries for the design competition, was launched on Friday.

"The National Art Gallery is a project for the people. This is why we are having a public exhibition of this scale, so that the people of Singapore can be part of the final design process," said Senior Minister of State Balaji Sadasivan, who was at the launch of "When reflections become form: Imagining our National Art Gallery".

"I think these are the two most important designs in Singapore. They are historic buildings — many people have an emotional attachment to these buildings … They can give us their suggestions so when we finalise the designs, architects can take into consideration the public's views and put some of these elements of the public feedback into the design."

The top three designs are by France's Studio Milou Architecture, Taiwan's Ho + Hou Architect and Singapore's Chan Sau Yan Associates in collaboration with Lekker Design.

But the one that will be chosen is unlikely to incorporate ideas from the other designs.

"The top three designs are distinct. Each has a certain wonderful feature about it — they are unique. I don't think you can take the three and mix it together. It's like taking char kuay teow, laksa and fish head curry and mixing (them) up and hoping you get a better dish," said Dr Balaji.

The free public exhibition runs until Oct 17 and the public can log on to www.nationalartgallery.sg to give feedback. — 938LIVE

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