This article comes to us courtesy of author Jason Wee, an artist, curator, and writer who directs Grey Projects in Singapore. It originally appeared on the Guggenheim's blog on January 14th, 2013.
In Singapore, between the freshly designated arts and museum district in Bras Basah and that bastion of colonial hospitality known as the Raffles Hotel, sits a remarkable work of architecture, the Central Library. Designed by Malaysian architect Ken Yeang, the building reflects sensitivities to the island’s tropical weather and its people’s reading habits; its most frequently accessed collections are housed directly below the ground-level entrance, enabling easy navigation and minimal loss of cool air. The Library is a strong example of what Yeang calls “eco-design,” reflecting his conception of built space as a species of living system that interacts dynamically with its environment to form a single ecology.
Yeang’s ecological innovation resides in his consideration of close relationships between urbanism and natural conditions, but it is no stretch to see how his thinking might also be applied to other, cultural, conditions. Such a “cultural ecology” seems appropriate for a library site that neighbors a complex known to Mandarin readers as “Book City.” This mixed development is rife with small bookstores, harried print shops, and cheap stationers—as well as with restaurants and public housing. And it is home to Basheer Graphic Books, Singapore’s single best store for arts and design publications.
