DOWNTOWN LINE AND THE REJUVENATION OF CBD FROM BELOW

Abstract

Underground is not an unfamiliar realm for the Singapore population. The Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system has acquainted people with underground spaces for more than two decades. Commercial developments, from as early as the 1970s, have basements as a standard, primarily for carparks, and increasingly for retail, recreation and pedestrian walkways. Experience of being underground is of an everyday nature in Singapore, widely accepted, unquestioned, and sometimes even indistinguishable. As continuous attempts are made to free up surface land; at periphery areas with our first rock cavern and an underground ammunition facility; and the central area with the fully underground MRT’s Central Circle Line with 29 stations and the Singapore Underground Road System (SURS) under the Central Business District (CBD) and Marina Bay; the urban underground experience is bound to be intensified. As the subterranean realities are being formed up, it is important for planners and architects to seriously consider the full potential of the excavated geo-space, appropriate spatial quality and aesthetics, effects on the urban landscape and the visitor experience,and integration of the underground to the existing surface. Only when all aspects of underground spaces are thought through, can a sustainable and beneficial underground urban system be realised; otherwise, a monotonous network of carparks and tunnels is foreseeable. The paper takes heed to the large scale excavation works happening in the CBD currently along Cross Street for the Downtown Line One (DTL1) and hypothesise the possibility of an underground force spreading outwards from this arterial axis. With the high demand of space in the CBD, can the underground offer an additional avenue for future development? To conclude the hypothesis, main counter-arguments against building underground are highlighted and discussed. It is the aim of this paper to coalesce the various views of the subterranean space, present the vital factors for successful underground design, and in the context of Singapore's CBD, discuss projected potentials of the geospace in future urban transformation. It is high time to uncover a new urban dimension, and apply a new aesthetics, different from the world above.