WE SHARE, WE GROW OLD : THE TANJONG PAGAR RAILWAY STATION RE-EXPERIENCED

Abstract

The thesis intends to find an alternative solution to the Master Plan, and not just merely commercialising the site or building more residential units on the site itself. It argues that it need not be all about commercial and residential zoning and that these programming can be zoned further south of the site where the Keppel ports or Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) is currently residing, thus keeping the genius loci of the site itself. The Economic Strategies Committee (ESC) (source:www.channelnewsasia.com) plans for a new waterfront city at Tanjong Pagar, which is currently the port area comprising of Keppel and Pulau Brani. The current port lease in the area expires in 2027 and port operations will be moved further west. ESC believes it can potentially allow for a substantial expansion of the business district, integrated with waterfront housing, hotels and other lifestyle attractions. Thus this new piece of land would be able to provide sufficient residential and commercial programming for the macro site, thus allowing the railway site to be kept and developed with its genius loci in mind. The site itself, on its superficial surface, is heavily bounded physically, yet on an urban scale, definitely compulsory to break its boundaries to allow new dynamics into the railway land site, to revitalise its long forgotten existence in the minds of Singaporeans and its past share history with Singapore. The railway station site can then be an urban node which to plug the existing Spottiswoode residents adjacent to site together with the new residents of the future waterfront city. Being dynamically different, one of the bourgeois elites living in the future waterfront city and the other comprising of older generations of Singaporeans living in Spottiswoode, the site becomes an important counterpoint or rather a meeting point where they can interact within. It also allows them to understand more of the railway land, not just how it used to be part of Malaysia and its superficial surface “scratch marks” but to delve deeper beyond the superficial, to experience the shared and parallel pasts between Singapore and Malaysia, our differences, our mental and physical boundaries which transcend on the site itself urbanistically and what will become of our bilateral relations in the future. The railway station will not only be for the new and old residents of the macro site but also for everyone; from the average Singaporean visitor, the visiting tourist, the Malaysian artist collaborating with the Singapore counterparts, et. cetera to experience this unique sharedness between Singapore and Malaysia.