The pervasive two-winged city denizen, cloaked in plumage of nondescript greys and often seen roosting on a window ledge or splashing in a park fountain, navigates a shaky relationship with its two-armed urban co-habitant. At worst, the pigeon is pelted for being a pesky nuisance and, at best, lobbed a scattering of food scraps (which…

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES. The title—whether or not intended to be tongue-in-cheek—is laced with honest truth. Today, over 50% of the world’s population live in an urban context, making cities the single-largest aggregate landscape on our planet to be manufactured completely by humankind. And here, in these cities, is a complex narrative of consumption (demand) and production…

Shuffling alongside other would-be audience members in a queue that snaked outside the auditorium entrance, I sensed a quiet building of excitement for the highly-anticipated lecture by David Adjaye. Once inside the 448-seat auditorium, the crowd’s droning chatter was quickly hushed by the arrival of Adjaye. Adjaye’s fashionably-late appearance certainly set the lecture program behind…

There is an alluring quality to be found in the details of banality characterizing the mass of public housing flats that sweep over Singapore island. This curious yearning for the details displaying how others live (alike or unalike from us) is evoked, perhaps most strongly, when gazing at something so familiar and commonplace to the…