It shows the latest planning and urban design thinking, which informs the 2025 Draft Master Plan (DMP_, and which reflects the current desire to replace dry words like ‘housing’ or ‘health’ with a user-friendly ‘Shaping a Happy and Healthy City’. The overall intention is ‘To make Singapore a liveable, inclusive and endearing home where generations can fulfil their aspirations’. Other key strategies involve ‘Stewarding Nature and Heritage’; ‘Strengthening Urban Resilience’; and ‘Enabling Sustainable Growth’.

Given Singapore’s track record in achieving extraordinary results in respect of housing, land reclamation and public transit (as they call it), these aspirations are genuine rather than cut-and-paste, motherhood-and-apple-pie statements which can sound so hollow.

At World Architecture Festival, Cheong Hoon Kean provided some chapter and verse in what was both an analysis of the problems facing cities in general, and a tour d’horizon of what Singapore is doing to address them – in the context of a city state with little land, little water, and no oil.

Professor Koon Hean Cheong, Chairman, Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities speaking on the WAF Main Stage

As you might expect, The Singaporean reaction is to think harder, combining aspiration with a pragmatic synthesis of existing resources and technologies, combining them in way which bypasses silo thinking. Their recycling of water, for instance, involves re-using sludge extracted from water and sewerage, burning it in waste-to-heat stations, and use of the energy generated from the heat to power another stage in the water desalination/processing phase.

Mrs Cheong, a former chief executive of both the URA and the Housing Development Board (HDB), gave some hope that at least one city has a real plan in respect of the net zero mantra. Interestingly, she suggested that in addition to the 10- to 15-year plans that guide the country’s future development, there would be a case for also thinking about a century plan.

A long-term view would help, she suggested, in making big but difficult decisions – for example to mover the port or airport, both described as unnecessary and unworkable when first presented, but which subsequently happened for good reasons.

Long-term thinking was the subject of another main-stage presentation, sponsored by Rockwool, in which net zero expert C K Tang, who has produced reports with or for the United Nations and the World Bank, set out what would be rational timetables and, more important, a priority list for behaviour and policies, to get us to where we need to be by 2050, or for some countries 2060. Nobody on the post-talk discussion panel was optimistic about hitting 2030 targets.

CK Tang, Engineer, Energy Efficiency Expert (member of Malaysia Green Building Council) | Founder and CEO of CK AT WORK Sdn Bhd, Ron Pickering, Business Unit Director, ROCKWOOL Asia & Richard Maimon, Partner, KieranTimberlake, discuss net zero with Paul Finch on the WAF Main Stage

Richard Maimon, partner in KieranTimberlake, was worried (like many other architects at the convention) that the Trump election victory, which emerged on day two of the Festival, was a bad portent for sustainability policies. As an aside, he noted President Trump’s refusal to visit the recently completed US embassy in London when he visited the capital because, the president claimed, it was a bad real estate deal. This was a snub to the State Department which was responsible for commissioning the new building, as much as it was to the ambassador and of course KieranTimberlake, the architects. Maimon pointed out that the entire cost of the new embassy, including all fees and taxes, was covered by the sale of the site of the former embassy in Grosvenor Square. And the new one is closer to 10 Downing Street and Parliament than the old one.

Another aside, from Rockwool’s Ron Pickering, noted the problem of fire in various parts of the world, where inappropriate insulation can be a life-threatening hazard. Will heat stress be a feature of the world tomorrow? It looks like it; Saudi Arabia’s Architecture & Design Commission is taking an interest in this subject and we await any initiatives around it with interest.

Stress of the institutional financial kind was the subject of a lively talk from one of Aecom’s global leaders, Richard Whitehead. His conclusion from the perspective of a huge internatonal consultancy which both advises clients and provides multiple design and construction services, was that the professions should do more to promote the value of good design, not least with worked examples of the difference it can make.

Richard Whitehead, CEO, Global B+P, AECOM speaking on the WAF Main Stage

This has been a familiar mantra in the past, but too often has simply resulted in architects talking to themselves, rather than making inroads into the corridors of client power, so useful advice from an insider. But you still wonder who is going to lead the charge.

Value has a kissing cousin relationship with values – and values were much in evidence in respect of a presentation by John Blythe, a senior partner at Foster and Partners, about the work being done for the Ellison Institute of Technology in Oxford. Originally a charity mainly interested in medical science, it has now expanded into wider spheres while maintaining its interest in medicine and a variety of health strategies.

John Blythe, Senior Partner, Foster + Partners, speaking on the WAF Main Stage

The task of the architects in this instance has been to supplement existing historic buildings with contemporary additions (including a timber bridge link across the site to avoid construction on a burial ground). The key point was not so much external appearance, but the working and spatial relationships between the big brains who will be working at the institute. The consequence has been a huge level of attention paid to laboratory benches and other aspects of the workplace environment, encouraging the recognition that, in our universe, everything affects everything else. So why work in silos? Construction work on the project is expected to start later in 2025.

Another Oxford project, extensions to Rhodes House by Stanton Williams, won the Retrofit category in the Completed Buildings section of the WAF Awards. A not dissimilar brief, on a tighter site with more heritage considerations, generated the sort of section-based analysis which was a joy to see presented, by Paul Williams. This included a beautiful glass cube with a timber-based interior, fulfilling the client’s desire to mark the new building with a piece of contemporary design. Another award-winner, Stiff+Trevillion, had an equally well-thought-out strategy for their Newson’s Yard project in Pimlico, London – a gem which transformed a back-land timber storage area into a new designer hub, yet retaining the timber heritage and spirit of the original. It is unusual to have two UK projects in the Completed Buildings final; both were admirable.

  
Left: Paul Williams from Stanton Williams presenting his Retrofit Category winning project, Rhodes House Transformation, to the WAF Super Jury
Right: Mike Stiff from Stiff+Trevillion presenting his Shopping Category winning project, Newson’s Yard, to the WAF Super Jury

Equally admirable was work by the Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu, whose keynote address is covered elsewhere in this newsletter. But in addition to that, his practice won two other prizes, both of which are for forthcoming development. The first was the GROHE/WAF Water Prize (£10k), for a design to deal with thousands of tons of wastewater generation by a Maotai distillery, all via natural means. The second, a first in WAF’s history, involved a competition inaugurated by the Philippines S M Prime group, a major developer in the Manila and further afield.

Kongjian Yu from Turenscape presenting his GROHE Water Prize winning project on the Festival Hall Stage

SM’s design leader, Jessica Sy, announced from the main stage that Turenscape had won the competition to design a significant park, running the length of one of two connected and gigantic artificial islands now under construction in Manila Bay. Run in association with WAF, five international practices competed for the job, with Turenscape proposing use of local ‘jungle’ vegetation in a design intended to address typhoon conditions and the ‘brackish’ water result from a combination of seawater and freshwater/storm run-off etc – while at the same time enabling long runs of retail development which will help to pay for the project, a joint venture with the Manila local government. A great initiative.

Jessica Sy-Bell, Assistant Vice President, SM Prime on the WAF Main Stage

Thinking big was, inevitably, the subject of a presentation by Alastair Richardson of Cox Architecture on the Festival Hall Stage. He reviewed the last three decades of Olympic Games architecture and planning, with the help of some revealing comparison same-scale maps, plus analysis of the extent to which new construction has been superseded by the re-use of the existing (notably Los Angeles in the 1980s and now again in 2028), the temporary (London 2012), or the city itself (Paris this year).

Alastair Richardson, Director, Cox Architecture, discussing the Olympic Games with Paul Finch on the Festival Hall Stage

On the other hand, the drivers for the new or the regenerated depend on the context: what if the existing is inadequate? One question mark was raised over a decision to re-use an existing stadium in Brisbane for the 2032 games, which will result on a facility which can only seat 40,000. Really? From any long-term perspective, especially with increasing populations, this looks like a politically-inspired blunder.

Richardson, an experience sports architect, concluded with a review of a series of new buildings forming part of Ahmedabad’s Olympic bid. Even if unsuccessful, the plan is to build the facilities anyway, first because they are sorely needed, and secondly, because they might form the basis of a bid on another occasion. He noted that a number of buildings used in Paris this year had been built in the expectation that the city was going to win the 2012 games.

Anticipating the unexpected might be a motto for any architect thinking about what the future may hold, and what they may hold which will make its mark on the future. A group selected by Sir Peter Cook, and discussed in his traditional Thursday lunchtime lecture, represented what he described as ‘cheerful agency’, a description he said might apply to WAF itself.

Sir Peter Cook, Architect, Cook Research Architecture Bureau Laboratory delivering his legendary lunchtime lecture on the WAF Main Stage

As usual his was the best-attended talk during the Festival. The subject this time was the work of a huge variety of names selected by PC for inclusion in Archigram 10 – the name originally meant ‘architectural telegram’ – supplementing earlier issues from a time when many in the audience had not been born. All those architects invited to contribute to the publication had to supply some form of drawing, and up to 500 words of text, so a bit wordier than earlier issues. It made for an extraordinary visual feast, beautifully produced by David Jenkins/Circa Press, and supported by ABB. No wonder that all the available copies sold out in a post-lecture signing at the Oro Editions bookshop.

Sir Peter Cook signing copies of Archigram 10 at the Oro Editions bookshop

That visual feast was much in evidence on the final day of the awards, when the category winners, in traditional dog-show manner, competed for best-in-show awards, presenting their designs again to super-juries. All are available to view on this website, as are the winners of the special prizes. Of the completed buildings, the observatory project in Cyprus, by Kyriakos Tsolakis Architects, was admired. But there was no doubting the quality of the Australian winner, unanimously agreed by the jury, chaired by Sonali Rastogi. The Darlington Public School, Sydney, has been designed for a community that has 25 per cent children of Aboriginal heritage (and the same proportion of teachers). This was a project that exemplifies the relationship between intellect and emotion, where the exploration and testing of the programme involved an attitude to history, culture and place – for example, the little bridge structure that cross what was once a river used and still understood by the local community.

Elena K. Tsolakis, Co-founder of Kyriakos Tsolakis Architects presenting her Civic and community category winning project to the WAF Super Jury on the Main Stage

Here, form follows function, but function includes the reconciliation of historic ethnic difference; the acknowledgement of past wrongs generates the prospect of brighter futures for all. The architect, Richard Francis-Jones of fjcstudio, is the first to have won the World Building of the Year twice; his previous winning project, Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki, similarly used architecture in the cause of cultural reconciliation.

Richard Francis-Jones of fjcstudio presenting World Building of the Year winning project, The Darlington Public School, to the WAF Super Jury

Alessandro Rossi from fjcstudio collecting the World Building of the Year trophy at the Gala Dinner

The choice seemed a good way to conclude a Festival with the theme of ‘Tomorrow’; and it will be relevant to next year’s Festival in Miami Beach, where out theme will be ‘Hearts and Minds’. Great architecture appeals to both.