“City room” — Oxford English Dictionary Submission (Part 2 - Submission)
What are you submitting? A new word or sense
Word or phrase: city room
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: sɪti rʊm
Definition: A bustling, covered public space that facilitates various events and activities, usually located in a large open area at the ground floor of an urban building.
Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about this word? Instances of the word (33) used in context are compiled here, chronologically:
“The city room is that place where many movement systems (subway, express bus, micro-bus, taxi) join and form an exchange with each other. Once they are appropriately related, this will naturally become the place of the greatest pedestrian concentration within the city.”
Movement Systems in the City. 1965. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University. Graduate School of Design. 19.
“As [the fireplace] became the central collecting place of the house, so the city room will be the place of the city.”
Ibid
“First in terms of urban design, we must create, city corridors, city rooms, and transportation exchanges in strategic points in the city. . .”
Maki, Fumihiko. 1970. “The Theory of Group Form”.
“This nodal space can be called “city room” and be used as an information exchange node for small groups and for the anonymous mass of individuals”
Koichi Nagashima. 1971 “Leisure and Social Change,” in Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group 1968-1971. 94.
“This implosion of activity is somewhat evocative of the "city room" concept put forward by the Japanese futurist Architect Fumihiko Maki.”
Stephens, Suzanne. November 1973. “MAIN STREET REVISITED”. The Architectural Forum. Vol 140 - No 4.
“This idea of a city room is reflected in the later entrance hall of the Rissho University Kumagaya Campus and in the smaller-scaled entrance hall of the Daikanyama Hillside Terrace Apartments 1st phase.”
Maki, Fumihiko. 1979. “Urban Design and Collective Form”. 槙文彥 / [編者 SD編集部]. 154.
“A common area at the heart of downtown could be a focus of downtown identity; a "city room".
Robbins, Robert Joseph. Summer 1980. “THE MAGNOLIA MXD, DALLAS”. Architecture 422: Architectural Programming. Division of Architecture, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas. Sec 5-11 pg. 129
“A city room is not a pedestrian shopping street but rather a formal place that serves as a crossroads for varied activities.”
Attoe, Wayne, and Donn Logan. 1989. American Urban Architecture. Berkeley: University of California Press. 149.
“The private equivalent of the city room is the corporate atrium, a lobbylike place through which people are introduced to a building complex, a place that also serves as a semipublic urban amenity, a gift to the city.”
Ibid, 153.
“The main atrium which we called the City Room was inspired by the ideas of the Metabolist Group in Japan.”
Lim, William S.W. 1990. Cities for People. Singapore Select Books. 8.
“. . .like People’s Park Complex, the center has a city room and is linked to a food center between the two. . .”
Koolhaas, Rem. 1995. “Singapore Songlines: Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis”. In SMLXL, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau. Monacelli Press. 1067.
“There are two sculptures on the ground floor; Homage To Newton by Salvador Dalí in the city room, and another designed by Fernando Botero.”
Wikipedia user: I64s. 3 September 2006. “UOB Plaza”. Wikipedia. Updated to remove quotes on 19 February 2011 by Wikipedia user: emerson7. (link)
“Instead, UOB opened about a quarter of the prime ground-floor area to the public in the form of a “city room”. Flanked by its banking hall, the four-storey, sky-lit “city room” is both a physical and visual bridge between Raffles Place and the Singapore River.”
Low, Calvin. 6 October 2007. “Twists and turns of UOB Plaza.” The Straits Times.
“The project will also be the first to incorporate a “City Room’ fronting a park. The City Room is a requirement by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) to bring life to the area by creating inviting spaces for public use.”
Lum, Dawn. Quote in article by Lim, Cheryl. 27 November 2010. “Glitzy revamp ahead for Tanjong Pagar.” The Straits Times. Page 21.
“In addition, a vibrant community space, City Room, will be integrated with Tanjong Pagar Park for recreation and events.”
Lin, Joyce. 17 May 2013. “Eco-friendly buildings.” The Straits Times. Page 24.
“And we were very, very clear that cities that have buildings like that have a civic space, it’s a people’s space, and we call it a ‘city room’.”
Koh, Seow Chuan. (2013, September 3), Interview with the Centre for Liveable Cities, (unpublished transcript). Accession number CLC/015/2013/006. Centre for Liveable Cities, Singapore
“LUSH URBAN PARK WITH UNIQUE “CITY ROOM”, A HUB FOR EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES”
TANJONG PAGAR CENTRE (advertisement). 27 March 2014. Business Times. Page 5.
“The park will also be integrated with a newly-created civic space called City Room. Flanked by retail stores and a variety of dining options, the vast 32,000 sq ft City Room is designed to be a vibrant community space for gatherings and recreation after work, or as a venue for exhibitions and corporate and commercial events that can continue into the weekends”
TANJONG PAGAR CENTRE (advertorial). 13 February 2014. Business Times. Page 32.
“There is also a 30,000 sq ft City Room, - a spot where GuocoLand plans to have events throughout the week. This public space, which can accommodate up to 2,000 people, will be open all the time and is sheltered from the weather by a solar panel glass canopy which is 15m high.”
Ann Zachariah, Natasha. 4 April 2015. “Work, live, relax in 290m-high centre” The Straits Times. Page 10.
“The most common types of privately owned public spaces are: City Rooms — Covered public spaces located at the 1st storey of the building. They function as spaces for respite within the dense urban built environment.”
Singapore Urban Renewal Authority. 2016. “GOOD PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR PRIVATELY OWNED PUBLIC SPACES (POPS)”. Development Control Guidelines. (link)
“In the middle of the park is the 30,000 sq ft City Room, a sprawling events space covered by a glass canopy with solar power. When the park is completed in the third quarter of the year, the City Room will be buzzing with activity, especially on weekends, says Ms Valerie Wong, general manager, commercial of GuocoLand Singapore, the Complex’s developer.”
No author. 12 May 2017. “Urban Park.” The Straits Times. Page 3.
“The City Room can hold up to 2,000 people. Ms. Wong says the company has arranged for one of its tenants, the Virgin Active gym, to hold fitness classes regularly. Also planned is a variety of community and cultural events, including farmers’ markets and concerts. After all, the area is fully equipped with a sound system and lights. The surrounding restaurants are encouraged to organize activities in the park too. For example, gastrobar Starker Signature will soon introduce acoustic music performances by local emerging talents six nights a week.
Ibid.
“Atrium spaces within buildings, and spaces in-between “outside” and “inside” could be conceived as “big city rooms” and “plug-in” spaces due to their accessibility from streets and other public spaces.”
Hee, Limin. 2017. Constructing Singapore Public Space. 1st ed. Singapore: Springer Singapore. 206.
“The city room is conceived as public space, that can accommodate outdoor performances and gathering spaces.”
Walliss, Jillian. 2018. “Thermodynamic Typologies: Lessons from Singapore.” Conference: sb-lab International Conference on Advances on Sustainable Cities and Buildings Development. Porto, Portugal. 9.
“Such projections of enlivening the city’s core through vertical living, and coexistence of the old and new, resemble the multilayered, high-rise, and mixed-use nature of the acclaimed People’s Park Complex (1967–73) and Golden Mile Complex (formerly Woh Hup Complex,1969–73), complete with their “city rooms,” 8 designed by Design Partnership”
Surya, Shirley. 2018. “Tracing and Placing ‘Incomplete Urbanism’, Place.Labour.Capital.” Singapore: NTU CCA Singapore and Mousse Publishing.
“The “city room” itself — described as an open nodal space of unspecific function, and characterised by intense activity and exchange of information, spontaneous encounters, and perceptual accessibility — is derived from what Lim considered to be the Japanese Metabolist approach, primarily articulated by Koichi Nagashima and Fumihiko Maki”
Surya, Shirley. 2020. “Figurations of Place And Plurality in William S. W. Lim’s Incomplete Urbanism“, in Bauer, Ute Meta, Puay Khim Ong, Roger Nelson, and Pallavi Narayan. 2020. Impossibility Of Mapping (Urban Asia), The. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company. 78.
“We are currently working on next generation City Room spaces, appropriate for equatorial conditions on the site.”
FitzGerald, Adrian. 11 January 2018. “City Room Innovation”. LinkenIn. (link)
“Fumihiko Maki’s “city room” was a reference for the interior urban space. Koh recalled a pamphlet published by Maki’s office that contained descriptions of the ideas of the city room.”
Seng, Eunice. 2019. “People’s Park Complex: The State, The Developer, The Architect, and the Conditioned Public” in Southeast Asia's Modern Architecture, ed, Jiat-Hwee Chang and Imran bin Tajudeen. Singapore: NUS Press. Footnote 103.
“This is why shoppers would bear to assemble in a large urban space under the tropical heat in Lim’s ‘city rooms’.”
Wee, H. Koon. 2020. “An Incomplete Megastructure: The Golden Mile Complex, Global Planning Education, and the Pedestrianised City.” Journal of Architecture (London, England) 25 (4): 501.
“Named the City Room, this space is the museum's centrepiece and will be open for public events and activities…”
Crook, Lizzie. 26 November 2020. “Hassell and OMA complete top-heavy WA Museum Boola Bardip in Perth”. Dezeen. (link)
“Today, the most common type of POPS are city rooms, plazas and urban parks designed to authentically reflect the intent of the overall development and the surrounding environment.”
Denton Corker Marshall. 9 May 2022. “How can privately owned public space transform our cities?” (link)
“A highlight of the park is the City Room, a vibrant public environment for special events and outdoor performances, and a hot spot for destination dining.”
Guoco Tower website (Accessed August 2022)
“Community events like fitness sessions and lunchtime performances will also be held at the City Room.”
CapitaSpring website (Accessed August 2022)
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