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Text
Li Shi Qiao
Photo
pearlbankapartments.com © 2001
Singapore
Architect - the magazine of the SIA
Once in a while,
one’s perception of all things is profoundly shaken by the experience of
an architectural work from the past, such as the Berber villages in south
Morocco and S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane by Francesco Borromini;
Pearlbank Apartments, designed by Tan Cheng Siong of Archurban Architects
& Planners, is one such work. Located on a hillside next to Chinatown,
Pearlbank Apartments stands admirably different from the traditions of
shop houses, the mute practicality of HDB blocks, and the indifferent
sleekness of curtain walls that surround the site. This splendid isolation
is both physical and intellectual. When it was completed in 1976, Pearlbank
attained to some form of distinction by having the highest density for a
private development, and being the tallest residential block in Singapore
with the largest number of units contained in a single block.
The main
residential block consists of a roughly three-quarter circular slab with
small slits in between. The block offers three types of units, two-bedroom
(130 sqm), three-bedroom (176.5 sqm), and four-bedroom (213.7 sqm); there
are 16 units to each floor. At the top of the block are 8 penthouse units
(372 sqm) with 5 split levels, roof terraces, and breath-taking views, making
the total number of units 288.
Slotted into the
sloping site at the podium level is a multi-storey ramped car park. The
community space for the residents begins at the podium roof level, where
the lift lobbies to the units and some convenience shops are located.
Structurally, the tower block is held together by a series of in-situ
concrete sheer walls which also function as party walls; these walls are
transferred through huge beams at the bottom of the block to allow more
openness at the lobby level.
But Pearlbank
transcends this physical description. The design of the building exerts
energy of a strong “willed” action – will to form, if you like. Not,
I hasten to add, the will to whimsicality of formalistic fashions of the
seventies such as mushroom-shaped balconies and truncated pyramidal
protrusions, but the will springing from internalized comprehension of
high-density urban habitation. Such will is embodied in the clarity of
planning, the intrigue of domestic spaces through level changes and the
deliberate avoidance of any references to traditional forms of dwelling.
The circular shape
of the main residential block, despite the resulting difficulties of
construction at the time, makes plenty of sense in maximizing the sublime
views of the city center and creating a sense of intimacy with communal
circulation corridors facing the internal courtyard. The orientation of
the circular slab is such that it avoids afternoon sun for all the units,
and the slits in the circular slab allow effective ventilation into the
internal courtyard. In one stroke, the connection with the city and
domesticity is wonderfully demarcated, although more could be done for the
internal courtyard space to highlight its communal nature.
The
“pie-shaped” units are “inter-locked” in sections; this
painstaking gesture gave the architect plenty of opportunities to create
changes in levels, such as those in entrance hall with kitchen and dining,
living room with master bedroom, and utility spaces connected to the main
circulation corridor through a dedicated external stair. Few would deny
that level changes in domestic spaces are enormously enriching devices in
design; these had been employed with worthwhile results.
Unlike many of
today’s condominiums, Pearlbank Apartments made no reference to forms
and colors of traditional dwelling. It asserts its own characterization of contemporary living in high density despite the popular doubts about
safety of high-rise dwelling at the time more so than any other apartment
blocks. It borrows no semantic meanings, makes no use of superfluous
decorations; it is its own iconic signifier.
Pearlbank clearly
forms part of the modernist discourse in architecture of the twentieth
century, with luminaries such as Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn pioneering
radical forms of urban dwelling long before Pearlbank. Le Corbusier’s
remarkable rethinking of low-cost urban habitation, which began with
“Ville Contemporaine” in 1922, generated radically different ideas of
urban forms; the technological advancement in construction in later years
brought versions of this vision to reality throughout the world. The
inter-locking apartment units at Pearlbank recall Le Corbusier’s duplex
“cross-over” section of “Unité d’Habitation” in 1952 (although
with corridor at every two floors instead of every three floors), and the
communal space originally planned at level 28 was intended to provide
additional facilities for the residence, much in the same spirit in which
Le Corbusier provided his roof communal space at “Unité d’Habitation.”
Furthermore, the circular residential slab with a car park podium resembles
Kahn’s memorable sketch of a “dock” complex for Philadelphia in
1956.
If Pearlbank lacks
the heroic aura of a pioneering work, it perhaps makes up with its
emphatic insertion into a particular site with unique climatic conditions.
Among many buildings in Singapore in the seventies affecting the
“international style”, Pearlbank is remarkably restrained in its
insistence on the purity and consistency of concept. It is precisely in
this insistent adherence to an architectural form deriving from logical
and clear planning that we find a rare criticality and vision in Pearlbank.
Formalism never played any part here, yet there is a strong formal
character and almost never a dull moment; this alone should make Pearlbank
a modern classic, head and shoulders above many other fashionable and
gimmicky contrivances from the same era.
Today, as we
surrender some of our rights to think about habitation independently to
developers whose design strategies derive from “market research” for
the lowest common denominators, we will do ourselves a great service to
take another look at Pearlbank, with all its unresolved corners, peeling
paint, leaking plumbing systems, and various forms of mutilations
perpetrated by the inhabitants.
[ Update > there is
no longer peeling paint after a $320,000 repair to the facade in early
2003, and
external plumbing systems were fully repaired at a cost of $550,000 in
late 2001 ]
[ Update
> March 2003 : a new roofing membrane is installed to reduce water
ponding and minor leakage to Penthouse Units ]
Architecture must sustain its criticality
and vision if any kind of “paradigm shift”, to borrow a term
contemporaneous to Pearlbank, is to take place among the “normative
architecture” of property development. Let us look forward to
maintaining Pearlbank as a “critics’ choice” in the world of
“people’s choices”; this has nothing to do with elitism and
everything to do with sustaining criticality and innovation which lie at
the heart of architecture.
LI
SHIQIAO
Li Shiqiao graduated from the Department of Architecture, Tsinghua
University, Beijing in 1984. He subsequently obtained his Graduate Diploma
from the AA School of Architecture, London in 1986 and them his PhD from
AA School of Architecture and Birkbeck College, University of London in
1994. Li worked as a Senior Architectural Designer, Wong & Ouyang
Architects and Engineers, Hong Kong between 1994 and 2000. He is currently
an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, NUS.
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