When we return to a place where we spent a significant amount of time, we can't but recollect and muse about the time (hopefully happy) that we spent there ...
*The long staircase in the centre of primary school, where as school monitors, we "guarded" the students from going up while the morning classes were on. (Those were the days when we had morning and afternoon sessions of students.)
*The four storeys that we climbed up, huffing and puffing, every afternoon, just to reach our classroom in Secondary One.
*The lecture theatre where we had econs and many other lectures, accompanied by the dog in the JC.
*Our first office.
But in Singapore, many a building, many an icon, gets demolished; schools, under the PRIME programme, get renovated and facelifts that change their looks and even locations ... such that ...
**Our primary school is no more, leaving only a shadow of a school gate, standing miserably and forlornly next to a busy thoroughfare, often missed if not for the eagle-eyed old girl.
**The secondary school stands at its old site (at least!), having acquired the land of its neighbouring school, but much renovated to an unrecognised and strange environment. The old building long demolished to make way for posh recital halls and other modern facilities that Singapore schools have.
**The JC lecture hall is long gone, the JC having moved to the site of its neighbouring school, its old site now occupied by another school.
**The office - our first office - at least the building still stands. Now home to museum pieces and highbrow stuff.
The sense of belonging, of nostalgic times past, is no more.
So it's with much empathy that I read the article below, though I be no sports fan with fond memories of the National Stadium.
~~DEMOLITION OF NATIONAL STADIUM~~
Losing a slice of history
As another nation-building icon bites the dust, we must ask ourselves: Was it all really inevitable?
By Ho Weng Hin, For The Straits Times
THERE is something surreal about the frantic search that is currently going on for the time capsule buried somewhere within the National Stadium grounds when the foundation stone was laid on Feb 23, 1970.
That, and the publicity and fanfare that has surrounded the impending demolition of the stadium, makes me think of a grand and protracted funeral staged for a person who is yet alive and kicking.
The 35ha Kallang Park Sports Complex is set for a complete makeover under the first Public-Private-Partnership scheme in which construction and management are outsourced to private developers. As stated on the Sports Council website, the $800 million Sports Hub aims to 'draw international events to its world-class facilities and offer events management enterprises some of the largest potential crowds ever to assemble in Singapore'.
It is 'a business opportunity not to be missed', the website declares.
Interestingly, also mentioned in the same breath is the Integrated Resort at Marina, the mega-project to draw tourists and investors to Singapore.
Now flash back to 1973, when the National Stadium was first opened. Then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew declared: 'From time to time, we shall throw up the exceptional sportsman or sportswoman. But that is not the aim of our sporting activities. I would rather see this stadium regularly used - morning, afternoon and night - by our students and adults from all over Singapore than to have it filled because of famous world-class teams.'
How times have changed. The promotion of sports is no longer for the purpose of building a healthy and robust society; it is now but one of many profitable leisure industries.
The demolition of the National Stadium was surely not inevitable, yet from the moment redevelopment plans were set in motion, its conservation was scarcely considered. Technocratic decisions premised upon its demolition progressively reduced manoeuvring space for exercising alternative options. In the process, the plot size was reduced by half, excluding an open space that could have accommodated new functions without demolishing the old.
The stadium was conspicuously omitted from the new plans, as if it never existed, even as other buildings, such as Oasis, Kallang Theatre and the Singapore Indoor Stadium, were highlighted and gave pause to the planners.
Still, being highlighted did not guarantee a place in posterity. The Oasis building, retained in earlier blueprints, has now been earmarked for demolition because the bidding consortia found it an inconvenience in their scheme of things.
An icon for nation-building
THE National Stadium is a good example of Brutalist modern architecture, a vigorous expression of utopian visions of a new society. It emphasises clarity in structure, discipline in planning and purity in the use of materials, projecting an image of restraint and rigour.
These heroic qualities are materialised in the soaring concrete structural frame, the vast, sweeping curves of the raked seating and the gravity-defying 20m cantilevered grandstand roof that did away with the need for columns.
Planned by the HDB Urban Renewal Department and designed by the now-defunct Public Works Department in the 1970s, the Kallang Park Sports Complex, with the stadium as its centrepiece, was no less grand a vision in its time than the proposed Sports Hub today.
Conceived of and brought into being by local planners and architects, it was the country's first attempt at such an ambitious building project, overcoming unknown odds with limited means.
The stadium, the largest in South-east Asia upon completion, featured state-of-the-art technology on a par with the best in the world, such as the Tokyo National Olympic Stadium and the Olympiastadion in Munich, both of which are still in use today.
Before 'Third World' became a dirty word, the National Stadium, where the South-east Asian Peninsular Games were held in 1973, represented solidarity and pride among developing South-east Asian countries.
Having hosted 35 years worth of exhilarating sporting events and rousing National Day Parades, it is unrivalled as a venue for the unreserved expression of patriotism for generations of Singaporeans.
Sadly, however, the stadium will soon join the rubble of two other obliterated nation-building icons, the National Theatre (1959-1984) and the Stamford Road National Library (1960-2004). Uncannily, in both cases, pseudo-technical reasons such as structural problems and road tunnelling works took precedence.
The spectre of the past constantly haunts public conscience: Were the sacrifices worth it? After 20 years, where the National Theatre once stood remains an impassive grass patch. Some have doubted if the five minutes saved by driving through the Fort Canning Tunnel is worth losing a well-loved landmark.
Currently, buildings less than 40 years old are not considered for National Monument listing. This loophole leaves out all the modern monuments that testify to Singapore's nation-building. Bridging differences in class, ethnicity and creed, the National Stadium, National Theatre and National Library, though not gazetted, are national monuments by birth.
Why do we find it inconceivable to tear down the colonial-era Supreme Court and City Hall while surrendering the National Stadium comes so easily?
Development and sustainability
PULLING down the National Stadium entails the obliteration of 3,000 concrete foundation piles averaging 25m deep and a superstructure amounting to 2,500 tonnes of steel reinforcement and 300,000 bags of cement. It will be the largest single building to be demolished to date.
Costly, time-consuming and laborious, the energy-and-resource guzzling cycles of demolition and construction will generate many cubic tons of non-recyclable waste and prolonged pollution. The environmental cost, coupled with immeasurable social impact, comes in exchange for a Sports Hub with a mere 25-year lease.
Reasons have been given for the stadium's demolition, such as maintenance costs, structural settlement and outdated facilities, but none are matters that cannot be resolved with current technology.
The 1933 Stadio Olimpico in Turin was restored and upgraded for the 2006 Winter Olympics. In Rome, the 1960 Palazetto dello Sport was lovingly conserved, while the Citta della Musica and Museum of Art for the XXI Century, by world-renowned architects Renzo Piano and Zaha Hadid respectively, add to the revitalisation of the former Olympic Village.
Mr Othman Wok, the former minister of social affairs who saw the National Stadium through to its completion in the 1970s, said when interviewed in 2005: 'I hope the new generation understands that this country was built through blood, sweat and tears.'
New memories may yet be forged with a new Sports Hub, but no amount of National Education can replace the lessons of history embodied in a concrete landmark from a historic - and heroic - era.
The writer is a researcher and writer on architectural and urban history currently pursuing postgraduate studies in Italy. (ST)
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