People's Park Complex & People's Park Centre by Darren Soh
Inauguration: 1973
Architect: Tay Kheng Soon, William S.W. Lim, Koh Seow Chuan of Design Partnership Architects
A gift to the people, the complex replaced the former market on this site (which was razed by a fire), prompting the renewal project. The building is one of the best exemplars of Brutalist architecture in Singapore and its stark geometrical clarity has made iconic the now ubiquitous tower-and-podium morphology. Sheer surfaces, scale, and repetition lend monumentality to the elevated 25-storey apartment slab, while the podium, richly articulated by ribbed, precast-concrete cladding panels, acquires a new dimension as it hovers above the ground. Age has taken its toll on the building, and this is compounded by modifications and a lack of maintenance. Despite the arguably garish paint over the building’s originally fair-faced concrete exterior and the oriental decor in the shopping spaces, the sheer audacity and verve of the original design is still unmistakable.
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Size: 59.4 cm x 42 cm. Unframed.
Print on Sihl Masterclass Lustre Photo Paper 300 - made with Epson Pigment Inks.
Signed by Darren Soh. No certificate of authentication.
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About Darren Soh
Darren Soh’s photographic practice explores architecture, urban landscape and space. An established photographer who is most recognised for his documentation of vernacular architecture. Darren has been placed in several international photography awards over the years, including the Commonwealth Photographic Awards, the Prix de la Photographie, Paris, the International Photography Awards, PDN and ICON de Martell Cordon Bleu. His works have been shown widely, and has published several monographs including While You Were Sleeping (2004), For My Son (2015) and In the Still of the Night (2016).
Darren was one of the co-founders of Platform.sg, an initiative to showcase photography of Singapore or by Singaporean photographers.