Covering Chinatown, With Glass and Plastic

Enclosing Singaporean public space part 3: covered streets

Jun 03, 2022

~ 2,800 words, a fourteen-minute read

Singapore’s Nankin Street from above in June 2022. Photo by author.

Somewhere between body and Sun lies a response to hotter weather with a simple premise: shield the former from the latter.

Simple premises can generate enormous variety. Sunshadingwise, human imaginations as early as 1989 came up with such extraordinary proposals as a humongous, in-outer-space glass shield, made of materials mined from the moon.1 Periodicals like Scientific American continue to run crazy articles about these skepticism-inducing megashader concepts every few years or so.2

Down to earth, an article on this Substack (recently featured, by the way!) argued for the merits of the humble umbrella.3 The household object was raised both as a reminder of individual agency and as a practical low-tech alternative to air-conditioned underwear, technology that remains as much a pipe dream now as it was when spoken of by Singapore’s first prime minister. One wonders which will happen first: commercially available ACed spandex or a space shield made of lunar dust. It’s anybody’s guess.

In the meantime, there is time to investigate the vast ground between shading a lone individual and shading Earth. Covered walkways were discussed in the above-linked article. Turns out they have a cousin, architecturally speaking: the covered street. But although this cousin might be a cousin in rough conceptual terms, its personality is totally different, its social life incomparable. Definitely different enough to be worth writing about on its own terms, anyway. Four of them in Singapore’s Chinatown district form the basis for the subject of this week’s post:

All covered street photos in post are by author and taken in June 2022

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Covered or un, city streets the world around are devilishly complicated entities. Especially the ones flanked by enfilades of smaller land parcels planned before buildings started getting enormous in the 20th century. Those kind, as shown in the photos above, are often defined by small buildings that are usually synonymous with a more-or-less random array of owners whose coexistence is defined by equally random forms of cooperation. Or lack of it. Streets are public, or at least colloquially considered part of the public “realm”, even if technically privatized. Unlike the adjacent buildings, they're usually open 24/7, free and open to all. The clash of public pavement and private building is at its best a staple of lively urban character, at worst the site of violence and its many terrible manifestations that turn the whole ensemble into barricaded jungle gyms under military rule. Entire books have been written just about their little details, like the embedded meanings of their various names.4 Even the shortest of urban streets are mishmashes of cultural, political, and social complexity.

It’s because of this complexity that the act of covering them with a single mega-roof is pretty uncommon, globally speaking. The singularity of an overarching canopy and the mess of everything below simply presents a challenge too insurmountable to reconcile most times. So, the circumstances under which such concoctions do materialize are worth unraveling.

Especially as the weather gets hotter.

As it has in Singapore, which was already hot before the planet was polluted.5 With a yearly average high of 89 degrees (32C), the country is an obvious candidate for canopies simply as a common sense sort of strategy. Below is a recent screenshot of a week of Singaporean weather. For conversational purposes it might as well be any week of the year in this equatorial place. The weather is consistently oppressively hot and humid, and if it’s not, that’s because it’s raining. Heavily.

If pressed to identify redeeming qualities, one could admit that at least it’s consistent. This predictability, combined with a prosperous nation where planning authorities are both powerful and “constantly [looking] for better and innovative ways to deliver our mission to make Singapore a great city to live, work and play” makes architectural responses relatively more implementable than other places.6

And for many reasons beyond bodily comfort, as it turns out, it is here where one repeatedly encounters the orderly canopy in a strange juxtaposition with the street and its inherent chaos. It turns out that even in a place with high levels of top-down urban planning control, it takes more than the lure of comfortable bodies to justify construction of these steel, glass, and plastic contraptions.

To unpack this, it’s helpful to start with a plan, which indicates some additional information about the canopies pictured above:

Diagram by author over Google Earth image underlay

As indicated in the labels, the four canopies in Chinatown were built over a number of years, with the first one at Amoy Street completed in the late 90’s.

One must go back another few decades to untangle their conceptual origins, though. Doing so is to slowly immerse oneself in a sauce of government led initiatives around heritage conservation, economic development, nation building, national identity, global identity, and tourism promotion.

The sauce, as it were, can be explained with some context around the history of Singapore’s built environment. Prior to its independence in 1965, the island city-state’s building stock was largely comprised of colonial shophouses. The kind with the five-foot ways and the red tile roofs. These kinds of buildings varied quite a bit in terms of number of stories, decorative ornamentation, and (as the name implies) their internal functions. More often not, they were hastily built with little intention of lasting longer than one-hundred years. Some were better taken care of than others. And anyway, many would not last that long anyway. When rapid development of much larger, concrete and steel constructed buildings sprang up soon after independence, huge swaths of colonial shophouses were demolished to make room.

Following the trend in many other countries, large urban erasure sparked a counter movement for conservation and historic preservation. Reasons for this can always be traced to country-specific political and cultural contexts, but the overarching, if superficial explanation for conservation movements has something to do with an instinctual human desire for a rebuttal to the “homogenising forces of modernity and globalisation”, to borrow a phrase from one Singaporean scholar on the subject.7

In Singapore, conservation was a strategy that addressed multiple government-defined goals. Broadly speaking, it was first concretely formalized in 1986, when the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) published the first “Conservation Master Plan”. That same year, a task force that was formed to study how the nation could boost tourism also published a report highlighting the potential of conservation areas in contributing to economic development.8 With the added benefit of instilling a sense of unique post-colonial identity, conservation of shophouse lined streets was solidified as an integral strategy.

Under this planning-heavy environment, the Chinatown district has been a place of especially intense focus for building conservation. There are a few reasons for this. Singapore’s population is 75% ethnically Chinese, and many citizens have records of the lives of relatives who immigrated to this part of the city. Chinatown is also proximal to the economic powerhouse that is the downtown central business district, has historical significance in its origins resulting from racially divided, colonial-era planning practices, and at the same time is surprisingly multicultural. It hosts a Buddhist Temple, a Hindu Temple, and an Islamic Mosque all on the same street and within 800 feet (250m) of each other. It’s clearly important locally, but also features prominently in Singapore Tourism Board marketing material for global visitors as well: “Explore a Chinatown like no other, and be enchanted by historic temples, hip bars and the heritage of Singapore.”9

With a domestic and global image to be crafted, and abundant economic development opportunities vis-a-vis tourism to be capitalized upon, Chinatown became a highly charged sandbox for urban planners (and to some extent, architects). Such are the conditions in which the street canopies were erected, the first one commencing development about 10 years after the initial conservation and tourism plans were published. So what do the canopies themselves have to do with any of this?

If one is not in the room where it happens, the spark of an architectural idea can be hard to pin down. Built by developer Far East Organization as part of the Far East Square mixed-use development, Chinatown’s first canopy at Amoy Street is no exception. But a critical article in a 1999 issue of Singapore Architect Magazine reveals a clue. While not explicitly admitted by the designers – DP Architects – the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, Italy is referenced in the article.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele - image credit: Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

Consciously referenced or not, that’s an appropriate precedent given Singapore’s ambitions for Chinatown. The staple sightseeing destination of Milan is exemplary of the alignment between historical architecture, sheltered streets, shopping, and dining. It’s truly a tour-guide worthy national landmark that generates immense cultural and financial revenue. Those who have been probably conclude that the Vittorio Emanuele as a whole is certainly grander than the sum of its parts. A five-year old could get it: if Europeans enjoy window shopping at Prada free from the rain, might Singapore’s visitors enjoy chili crab sheltered from the sun (and rain too)?

Wherever the inspiration, canopy-covered Amoy St. at Far East Square proved successful enough as a kind of pilot project. When massive MRT infrastructure investments in Singapore’s Chinatown district were completed in 2003 and 2013, more canopies came along for the ride.

The map above shows how they’re conveniently located to work with the network of MRT station entry points, and to complement important cultural sites and food or shopping complexes.

When compared with each other, the four canopies are quite varied, architecturally speaking. There is a sense of incremental progress. The thick tubing and relatively less well-lit Amoy St. was seen as substandard outcomes to be improved upon.10 Also, it was designed to create a space that’s practically sealed-off from natural airflow. Its two smaller wings are accessed through sliding doors and even appear to even have air-conditioning vents. The newer iterations apparently realized that promoting natural ventilation with fans and passive breeze was more appropriate for a space that is, after all, a street, not an atrium. And with thinner trusses and more transparent surfaces, the spaces they cover are much brighter and airier compared to Amoy St.

Smaller wing of Amoy Street with mechanical vents apparent to the right and near the end of the corridor.

The most technically advanced of the four is the one on Nankin St. Instead of glass, the canopy surface is made of ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). In lay terms: plastic. High-quality plastic, but plastic. A recent late morning tour of the street with the vice president of Vector Foiltec Asia Pacific (thanks Vector Foiltec!) reveals a litany of technical insights into the complexity that went into this particular canopy. The list could fill an entire article in its own right, but highlights include the discrete sprinkler system, which sits in a little box and, in the event of a fire, robotically unfolds and aims at the flame source from afar and puts it out super-soaker style. The designers also took pains to lay out a thoughtful structural design that coordinates the new steel columns with the irregular dimensions of the historic buildings. An etching pattern on one side of the ETFE “pillows” – that may need additional etching to account for warming temperatures – creates a cool, silver light. There is an elaborate gutter system, but the surface is basically self cleaning in the rain. Unlike Amoy St., the ETFE system here allows a full spectrum of light pass through which allows small trees and plants to grow below.

From a bodily comfort perspective, the space is unquestionably quite enjoyable. Long lines form during lunch time, the queuers seemingly unbothered by the 95% humidity or the gentle falling rain. It’s a breezy and dry and shaded street, a luxurious novelty in this region of the world.

While translucent surfaces and the latest and greatest tech specs may have neutralized the sky, the conservation guidelines that emerged in the 80’s have frozen the exterior shophouse walls in time. But in order to account for the vagaries of retail economics and the consistent turnover of restaurants, much is subject to change. Perhaps understandably, this means that a great deal of architecture inside the buildings themselves has been completely obliterated and rebuilt at least once. Contemporary demands of grease traps and sprinklers and A/C and elevators and a thousand other things that weren’t invented in the 1820’s are simply too foreign to reconcile in some sort of intellectually satisfying dialogue with the historic material. This isn’t entirely surprising, as historic guidelines in many places, including the United States, tend to be more concerned with exterior appearances than a building’s inner workings.11

Speaking of surfaces, the “floor” below the canopies at Amoy St. and Nankin St. is, for lack of a better evaluation, strange in that it feels appropriately described as a floor. Rather than a piece of ground. Whatever it’s called, the surface one walks on on these streets is certainly tasteful, but also strangely smooth and tightly assembled. It’s even slightly glossy. And everywhere full of neat seams that cover dozens of utility panel boxes. The floors are comfortable to walk on, but they’re evocative of a large hotel lobby. Like the ones that have a feature fountain somewhere just out of view. It’s weird imagery that comes to mind, in this conservation district.

On that half-cynical note, it’s worth noting that the ongoing marathon to craft a certain kind of Singaporean Chinatown has not been without mixed reactions over the years. A properly scholarly article on the subject by Brenda Yeoh outlined a range of opinions made public in the rapidly changing years of the 2000’s. Some residents lamented the area’s genuinely historical identity being dumbed down into a money making “tourist trap”, while others seemed to appreciate the “exciting” and Manhattanesque quality of the area in all of its quirky diversity.12 But by 2022, the ultimate outcome of Chinatown’s changes is perhaps best summarized by Yeoh’s concluding remark:

…a place of unquestioned legitimacy both as a heritage artifact within a highly planned urban landscape undergirded by [multicultural] ideology, as well as a leisure and tourism site which generate activities for both tourist and local visitors, and revenue for businesses and the state.13

Photogenic as they are performative, the canopies very much fit into that repertoire. This is especially true in light of an interesting phenomena, apparent to any careful observer today. That would be the canopies' role in actively physically conserving the walls of the historical shophouses. The same surfaces (shophouse walls) that receive the lion’s share of conservation attention are now well protected from rain and sun that quickly stain anything unprotected in this climate.

There is suspicion that the rather ornate paintwork displayed today matches the original condition of these humble buildings. But regardless, the painted walls shine on, conserved ideologically by policy and conserved literally by high-tech canopies.

So, like McDonald’s french fries, the exterior walls stay preserved in perpetuity. But everything else is far from conserved. Tenants and tourists come and go, their respective signage or photos of the signage continually following the call of the present, an ever fluctuating moment.

But there is at least one sign that probably won’t change. It’s an informational placard nearby and it’s worth reading since it evokes imagery of the place in an inconceivable era, generations ago:

Life in Nankin Street and Upper Nankin Street was representative of the squatter living conditions found all over Chinatown before the advent of public housing in the post-war years. Rooms in shophouses were divided several times over into tiny cubicles, averaging 15.5 feet by 13.5 feet. It was not uncommon for entire families to be crammed into a single cubicle.
…Needless to say, pollution, overcrowding and disease were rife. The infant mortality rate was high, and suicides occurred with alarming frequency.
…In 1955, six three-storey shophouses on Upper Nankin Street were reported to be housing over 300 residents.14

Abysmal by contemporary standards, certainly. But far from static. Inasmuch as the conservation here allows immense flexibility over time under the rubric of a translucent canopy, painted colonial walls, and millennium flooring, it may paradoxically be “conserving” the liberty to make incremental transformations. Change is, after all, the most enduring certainty.

So Chinatown may be partly covered in glass and plastic, but it’s by no means shrink wrapped. In any case, many happily and eagerly consume McDonald’s french fries. One wonders if their pejorative association does not square with enjoyed reality. Something to ponder while munching them in the shaded comfort of an ETFE canopy.

After all, in Italy as in Singapore, a McDonald’s is never far from a covered street.

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