Favourite Photos
Icon: LJ/sixthmile
Credits
Layout: tuesdaynight
Inspiration: DayBefore!Misery
Best viewed: Mozilla Firefox.
Resolution: 1280X800.
What is Architecture? The IR?
Bitched on: Saturday, April 07, 2007
Time: 4/07/2007 04:39:00 AM
Continued from 'What is architecture?'Time: 4/07/2007 04:39:00 AM
Of course not every star-chitect's design is choosen to be realised in Singapore.
The famous (or rather infamous) example has to be Frank Gehry's unprecedented scale of glass and sails for Atlantis Sentosa (Kerzner’s Sentosa Integrated Resort/ Casino bid, see pictures above and below) which was passed over for the tamer and 'seen-that-before' Infinity@The Bay Pte Ltd (a joint venture between Genting International & Star Cruises).
That was a day when almost everyone in the architectural world mourned the lost of a unique and monumental would-be icon. Personally, I am not a fan of Gehry's works but I am a fan of making Singapore a global architectural icon and attraction. And Gehry's unique jellyfish-like structures (but I would describe it as crushed pieces of paper; its crappy but still monumental) would have definitely put Singapore on the world map (kinda like what Gehry's Guggenheim museum did for the sleepy fishing town of Bilbao, picture below) . It reaped in millions alone annually from architectural tourism.
Unique, bold and experimental. Singapore can't seem to handle it just yet, which is a huge pity if Singapore wants to expand beyond the Bali-island-resort architecture. So instead of something futuristic and timeless, we have this:
Have I seen that before? Oh yeah, in Genting Highlands. So much kitsch, it turns my stomach. So what if it has Universal Studios? Would a tourist from Australia or United States be wondering, "Gee, I'm sick of the Universal Studios here in (insert name of country here), maybe I'll go halfway across the globe to Singapore's,"?
Maybe the Singaporean government should have thought long term.
Gehry's design = more tourism = more revenue = future themeparks (Universal Studios or Disneyland even).
Labels: architecture, Strictly Architecture
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home