| Date | 2022-11-17 |
| Event start | 18:15 PM |
| Duration | 1 hrs 30 min ( from 6:15pm to 7:45pm ) |
| Venue | URA Centre, White Room (Level 3) |
| CPD | 4 points |
| Contact | 2 |
| URL | Visit |
Synopsis
“What is it to be Modern? Modernity asserts the primacy of Reason. Modernism is the look and feel of contemporary things. Modernisation is the process of becoming Modern.”
Tay Kheng Soon
Tay Kheng Soon is one of Singapore’s most important public intellectuals and thinkers. Beyond thinking about suitable built forms for the tropics, and the aesthetics of design, Tay takes a holistic approach to planning the built environment and wrote prolifically about these ideas. In 2021, he published a book titled “Big Thinking on a Small Island”- a collection of writings on these and various other topics that occupied him in a lifetime of thinking, teaching, building and expounding. His range is vast, traversing subjects as diverse as outdoor education, urban morphology, town planning, national identity, regionalism, ageing in place and the political economy of design. The positive feedback from readers of the book made him realize the importance of making this book readily available to the masses, thus the creation of this e-book that condenses the book’s contents into bite-sized information through captions and illustrations that is simple to read and easy to understand.
Join him and his guests as he unravels snippets of his e-book followed by a discussion on the relevance of his past writings and observations to the architectural profession and education today and tomorrow.
Speaker
Tay Kheng Soon
Tay was among the first batch of students to enrol in the Diploma of Architecture course at the Singapore Polytechnic in 1958. He graduated five years later in the pioneer batch of locally educated architects, joining a select group of local architects educated overseas in a professional scene that was still dominated by British expatriates. The emergence of locally trained professional architects in Singapore coincided with decolonisation and a rising consciousness of their role in the building of a post-colonial nation.
For Tay, Singapore’s independence meant not a reactionary rejection of Eurocentric modernity or a retreat into parochial nationalism through, for example, the triumphalist assertion of the supremacy of one’s national traditions and cultures. Instead, he saw the relevance and the liberating dimensions of modernity, selectively embracing it while also asking how he, as a citizen of a newly independent nation, could contribute to the constant transformation of modernity.
His beliefs led on to him being Chairman of the Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group (SPUR) in the 1970s and later president of the Singapore Institute of Architects, receiving its Gold Medal in 2010. His design research extends beyond architectural scale to urban planning and finally to the global scale. He is also a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a member of the World Ekistics Society, and founding Chairman of the Substation, the experimental centre of the Arts community.
Schedule
| 6.00pm | Registration |
| 6.15pm | Opening Address by SIA President Melvin Tan |
| 6.25pm | Presentation of the E-book |
| 7.10pm | Q & A |
| 7.45pm | End of Event |
Terms & Conditions
- For SIA Members whose registrations have been confirmed, attendance is compulsory. Cancellation for complimentary registration is only allowed 3 working days before the actual event.
- Any absentee will be charged at $20.00.
- Ticket is non-transferable under all circumstances.
- Group registration will be subjected to group admin fee of $1 per ticket per transaction. Replacement/Cancellation of participant will not be allowed under group registration.