#sobstories

The mark of a modern city is that its landscapes are constantly changing. While there’s constant improvements to be made, places are a largely sentimental thing. But one small team is doing something more than just fulfilling our whim nostalgic desires. We sit down with Kelly Koh, Eugene Tan, and Gad Tan to chart out the shifting relationships between physical and digital, and the spaces in between.

We love the project. Who does what? K: I’m Kelly, an Architecture graduate. Eugene and I embarked on this project together while we were still in school, developing the structure, focus, and experience of the website. Apart from that, we do research, particularly from rare books, and field work, which adds to the site’s content.

G: I'm Gad and I lead a web design and digital development studio called Pettycache. Our role in the project was to design and develop a digital framework to facilitate the needs of the SOB team. We handled everything digital from building a content management system to setting up emails.

It can be said that the concept is rather ‘nostalgic’, would you agree? Or would you say the project is a reflection of the current cultural heartbeat? E: It’s interesting you point that out, though we didn’t set out to do so. We started with a focus on many buildings with strong public dimensions mostly from the ‘60s to ‘80s, because we felt they held meaning to a greater public. This was Singapore’s nation-building period, and paralleled in our urban history are building projects which attempted to articulate what it meant to be Singaporean and to live in Singapore. Many of these buildings have also developed deep-rooted communities which are worth documenting and discussing. So if you take those two qualities to the hilt, you may find yourself looking some time into the past. This is where we began, and we are always looking to build upon the current crop of buildings.

I think it’s difficult to grasp what the present cultural heartbeat is, even in a fairly small place like Singapore. And because we are in Singapore: What is culture? Who decides what culture is? I feel these are very interesting questions which are part of what we would like to explore.

K: Yet it does appear that the local situation is rather caught up in nostalgic sentiment, as seen in several activist movements, debates, and even expressed in interior design. This rallying spirit is an encouraging one, which brings the image of the city to the forefront of our collective consciousness. Our hope is to eventually broaden the system of value appendage, inculcating in people an appreciation of our built environment without the impetus of impending loss.

You chose a newer medium to present something so archival. E: In our research we had to constantly read and react to local happenings. That’s when we realized that things online were changing - there are people willing to talk about buildings and spaces, to discuss their meaning and significance. One example would be the effort to retain the old Malayan railway as a green corridor. We felt that the social contract between the public and the planners is evolving, or the public’s relationship with the architect. The value of good design is becoming more widely acknowledged, and I feel that the internet as a public domain, is the ideal place to test and understand these relationships.

G: In short, I think what we're doing is to serve as an online repository of peoples' memories and stories. It's almost a visualisation of how far we as a city have come and how much more there is ahead of us.

K: Yup, maybe in a way, equal parts nostalgic and progressive.

Was it easy working with Google Maps? G: Well there are a number of limitations, like one of the things we’re trying to do now is to allow an an administrator to easily set a location without having to go through the backend - previously that was more complex, we had to get the exact latitude and longitude and insert it through manual code, update the servers, only then does it display on the frontend. We also had to build a site on top of Google Maps to host all the content. We’re constantly thinking of how to make it as easy as possible.

How long did you guys take to build the site? E: Almost 2 years from our idea conception to public beta, we were still in school when we started this..

G: The biggest part was content accumulation, and that’s all them. They’re the ones who are running around with the cameras, doing the research, making multiple trips to the libraries.

So you seed the information, and other people contribute sob stories on top of that. G: Yes, that’s one of the founding principles behind the project. Person A can describe it one way, someone else will have another interpretation. It’s the intersection of these stories that give it sense, and that’s why we built in a contributing section. It’s one of the key insights we’re trying to highlight.

E: For the info part we’ve just interviewed several architects who have shared the stories behind their buildings, and hopefully in the pipeline we’re going to gather contributions from more of these lao jiao (experienced) architects. So it’s not going to necessarily be just coming from us, but in the beginning we needed someone to seed that content and that was us.

Can people pin on a location yet? E: That’s definitely in the works. 

What are the plans going forward? E: Given that this is a nascent passion project and not a full-time job, the long-term plan is to keep it sustainable. I think there have been a lot of sites with interest that have fizzled off after awhile, some of the creators have gone on to do other things or found ‘real jobs’. Right now we’re exploring how future generations can come in and help us out, for example younger people who are still schooling and have some time on their hands.

Another thing we want to get is also the architects and designers’ opinions. We’re also thinking of doing a tablet and smartphone version, so the walking trails will be more accessible for people and maybe even tourists.

Are there plans to go beyond singapore? E: I think one thing you’ll realize is that the Singapore map fits quite nicely on the screen. It opens up on the screen, you see the expressways, the main arterial roads, you get a very good sense of location and where certain things are. If you go bigger, it becomes harder to see things, and this unique condition of singapore is lost.

K: But if there are people who would want to franchise it, we won’t necessarily object.. (Laughs)

If you could sum it up, why would someone come to your site? E: We hope to appeal to people by giving them a takeaway - they get the information, pictures, and play around with the website - so there’s something that they can receive as much as we ask them to give. We know that we can’t just put out an empty canvas and expect people to contribute. Asking people to give - it’s a very sentimental and emotional thing, it’s very personal. On our part we need to keep abreast of what’s happening to certain places. On a basic level - not everybody reads the papers everyday so if we know of something we can tell people and they can have an emotional reaction to that.

K: I think what facebook has is a kopitiam (cafe) atmosphere, so uncles (distinguished men) are happy to contribute to that sort of environment. For us we’ll have to focus on the interactive and exploratory elements so that people will start seeing the website as a destination.

How would you describe the website in your own words? G: I like to think of the website as a kuay-lapis, a cake with many layers. There are layers of mapping and cartographic tools to tie in layers of collective stories and memories, creating a strong sense of association and geographic placement.                               

E: A leap of faith.

K: A being in infinite gestation, never fully discoverable. 

And your favourite buildings in town? E: In Singapore, Tampines North Community Club by William Lim Associates from 1989.                               

K: The Subordinate Courts Building by Kumpulan Akitek, built in 1976.

G: Pearl Bank Apartments. Probably have to check our site for the architect, but I like it for its design. They don’t build them like they used too.

E: It’s by Archurban, also completed in 1976.

The State of Buildings project is a celebration of histories, memories and relationships connected to buildings and places. We believe that every place is larger than itself. No single piece of information or account can ever pin down what a place truly is or means. Whether or not it still stands, it never ceases to exist. Contribute your transient encounters with these places, and together, shape the State of Buildings. Explore, Discover and Share.