People and Organisations.
There are no buildings without people and institutions. Many people and organisations are involved in shaping the modern built heritage of Singapore. Besides architects and designers, there are other individuals like builders, engineers, clients, patrons, writers, publicists, and advocates. Individuals often belong to different types of organisations. These organisations—both public and private—are key to the construction and destruction, maintenance and neglect of our modern built heritage. In this page, we celebrate those who have played important constructive roles in the past.
Do you see any significant individual(s) or organisation(s) missing from this list? Please let us know here.
Geoffrey T. Malone
Based in Singapore since 1981, Malone is probably best known for designing the neon-lit, futuristic-looking Yishun 10, Singapore’s first purpose-built multiplex that officially opened in 1992. Malone was probably given the job by Golden Village Entertainment because he already had a reputation as an “architect of new pleasure domes” in the late-1980s.
Dr. Norman Edwards
Norman will be remembered with affection by former colleagues and students as a gentle, cultured man with endless patience, who was the academic pivot in the School at a time when it was going through major changes in the 1980s.
Women in Architecture and Planning in Singapore
Women had participated in the architectural, engineering, and construction fields before the Second World War though records are scarce.
Asian Planning and Architectural Collaboration (APAC)
APAC was building up a resistance against the uniformity of globalisation and the linguistic games of post-modernism at that time. Second, CIAM and the modern movement remained the counterpoint for APAC, and this brought APAC much closer to ethos of Team 10, where there was a persistent search for the a more humanist form of architecture.
Frank Wilmin Brewer
Frank Wilmin Brewer (1886-1971) was a British architect who was versatile and fluent in a variety of contemporary styles, prolifically designing houses, schools, and commercial buildings over his roughly thirty-five years career in Singapore.
William S. W. Lim (1932-2023)
In a long and successful career of William Lim Siew that spans more than four decades, beginning at around the time when Singapore attained self-government, Lim’s journey could be said to mirror the post-independence architectural history of Singapore.
Kumpulan Akitek
The firm has its origin as C. A. V. Chew and Partners that was founded by Victor Chew (b. 1928) in 1958. It was renamed as Kumpulan Akitek, which means an “ensemble of architects” in Malay in 1964 following the merger of Singapore and Malaysia in 1963.
James Milner Fraser
James Milner Fraser (1905-1978) was an architect who was significant in the planning and development of Singapore’s early public housing estates under the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT).
Tay Kheng Soon
The best illustration of Tay’s selective embrace of Eurocentric modernity is his design for the Tropical House at King Albert Park. Completed in 1994, the house is considered a culmination of Tay’s long quest for an architectural aesthetics of the tropics, following decades of experimentation with different formal languages in his previous work.
Eu Jin Seow
Dr. Eu Jin Seow was a pioneer architect and architectural historian of Singapore.
As with almost all pioneer architects who studied overseas, Seow came from a prominent family. His mother Tan Poh Li was Tan Tock Seng’s great-great granddaughter, and his father Seow Poh Leng was the General Manager of Ho Hong Bank, which later merged with two other banks to become Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation.
Woo Mon Chew
Woo Mon Chew was a Cantonese businessman, who was also a major contractor in Colonial Singapore. His firm was behind major colonial monuments like the former Terminal Building of the Singapore Civil Aerodrome and the former Hill Street Police Station.
Ng Keng Siang
Ng Keng Siang (1908–1967) was the most prominent of Singapore’s first generation of locally born, university educated architects. He ran an extremely successful practice, and had a career spanning pre- and post-war periods.
Lim Chong Keat
Datuk Seri Lim Chong Kiat (1930– ) is regarded as one of the most important architects of Singapore and Malaysia. His firms produced seminal architecture of the post-independence period, including the Singapore Conference Hall, the Malaysia Singapore Airlines Building (Singapore), and the Negeri Sembilan State Mosque (Seremban).
Ho Kwong Yew
Ho Kwong Yew (1903–1942) was the first local-born Asian to become a registered architect in Singapore. He passed the first professional examination conducted by the Board of Architects when the Architect’s Ordinance was introduced in 1927.
Alfred Wong Hong Kwok
Alfred Wong (1930– ) belongs to the first generation of post-war overseas educated local architects. His practice, Alfred Wong Partnership, spans five decades, traversing Singapore’s key political milestones from the late colonial period to merger with Malaysia to post-independence.