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Lilian Chee 139 1. INTRODUCTION While the study of urban historical traditions in the architectural curriculum is a shared mandate, its modes of instruction have scarcely moved beyond the usual stock of precedent studies focused on form, style and typology. This method of instruction, though sufficiently providing parallel background knowledge for students of architecture, further isolates the disciplines of history, theory and criticism as increasingly remote parameters for design. In the context of Asian architecture’s ever more prolific expansion, such antiquated and rarefied notions of history need to be urgently reviewed. Indeed, the future of Asian space hinges on the premise that its globalized formats are held in equilibrium by critical knowledge of its localized historical origins and impetus. This chapter thus proposes a more complex relationship between history and design by revisiting how the historical aspects of “site” may be activated in the academic design studio through experimental pedagogies focused on the representations and fabrications of architectural histories conducted in relation to particular sites. Drawing on “Site, Situation, and Spectator,” an interdisciplinary site-responsive program developed at the National University of Singapore, new methodologies for appraising and intervening with, as well as subsequently representing, histories of urban sites will be examined. In the island state of Singapore, the rapidly changing patterns of reoccupied, reclaimed, redeveloped and contested sites in its built environment become causes of concern in terms of their cultural and historical sustainability. Chapter 8 Site, Situation, Spectator: Encountering History through Site-Responsive Practices Lilian Chee SITE, SITUATION, SPECTATOR 140 The question of what constitutes a “site” in the academic context can be prosaic. Yet, given Asian architecture’s expansion, this question has never been more urgent. This chapter discusses an expanded notion of site by borrowing and transforming art historical principles, so that these ideas become relevant for architectural production. The challenge is to find new means of engaging future changes while maintaining a critical engagement with a site’s historical lineage. Techniques are adopted from within architecture and its allied disciplines — art history, cultural geography and material culture — so that the design process, which begins with a revision of attitudes toward the site’s history, may cultivate broader contexts beyond a typical focus on precedence. In particular, the chapter will discuss how an expanded notion of “site” enables different modes of representation and fabrication, which ultimately poses history as a constructed and ever-changing category, aligned with the vicissitudes of Singapore’s and Asia’s future space. 2. SITE: STUDIES IN THE SINGAPORE ACADEMIC CONTEXT Buildings are usually constructed to be seen frontally, but sites are more elusive. Few present themselves head-on. Around the corner, in the distance, even out of sight, they conspire to illusion. The viewer’s mobility is inevitable, the viewer’s experience of a place is inarguable, but the site is not static either. Expectations of the site can affect what happens there. So seeing through a site is a necessity. A site is a half-full, half-empty container, its content(s) visible to some and invisible to others. We choose the lens and then the frames.1 Etymologically, to “re-member” is to make something part of the body. Memory and history make sense only when they become visceral. However, the place of historical memory in the Singapore context is complicated. History is a prime nation-building asset, and the Singapore narrative is, to a certain extent, reverential. Not surprisingly for a young nation, its primary themes are, on the one hand, tirelessly evoked in education and popular channels through a sometimes over-determined state, and increasingly, capitalist rhetoric. On the other hand, the possibility of history being incrementally embedded in the lie of the land is somewhat remote. Material traces of the past in its geographical terrain and the built environment are ceaselessly manipulated, reconfigured, or erased in the surge of rapid development such that claims of indiscriminating tabula rasa have been controversially aired.2 The evidence of this physical upheaval may be observed in its stunning land reclamation statistics, which record the literal expansion of the island from an area of 581.5 square kilometers prior to 1960, to 699 square kilometers in 2009.3 To put it mildly, the very ground on which architectural intervention is premised is thus unstable, as it continues to evolve at a dramatic pace. Due to its age, limited size and ambitious response to global and regional economic pressures, Singapore’s architectural agenda as delineated in large-scale concept plans...

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