LEARNING IN THE CITY : AN URBAN CAMPUS FOR THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

I have an urban pet peeve : That our City has been emptied of all schools. Schools and other educational instituitions are invaluable assets to any City, capable of enriching both Student and City in immeasurable ways. A City without them will be a poorer one . During the Middle Ages, the three great institutions were the Church, the Empire and the University - a trinity of powers expressing a trinity of virtues : spiritual, temporal and rational - and the City rested on this tripos. It follows that the University ought to be a necessarily visible symbol of this vital place that it occupies in the City. When Raffles first planned the infant Singapore, the plot of land set aside for an institution of higher learning was, naturally, next to the Cathedral and the Town Hall. Up to the early 19705, educational buildings occupied this significant part: of the City. Indeed, this precinct is the so-called Civic and Cultural District of today. Precious little remains of the book shop-milkbar culture once peculiar to this are : a casualty of population shifts, rising land prices and the Restricted Zone . This thesis attempts to restore the rightful place of education in the City, but in a way that is integral and unique to our City. Such an institution of learning will ultimately partake of, and contribute to, the variety of urban life. The chosen vehicle is a topical one : the Open University Degree Programme soon to be run by the Singapore institute of Management, the nature of the brief is in many ways ideal for such an urban campus.