Like Singapore, Hong Kong can try to go beyond liveable to become lovable

Singapore wants architects and urban planners to give more priority to intangible values like people’s sense of attachment, connection and inclusion
Hong Kong can take a leaf out of Singapore’s playbook in thinking about the preservation of its buildings and spaces, and measuring success differently

Adrian Lai Wen-Yang

Published: 9:30am, 25 May 2024

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Singapore and Hong Kong suffer from the same problem – we’re just not lovable enough. We may be viewed as ultra-modern metropolises that are the gateways to Asia. Perhaps even glitzy and glamorous.

But when it comes to our ethos, we’ve been seen less favourably. “Boring” has been used to describe both Hong Kong and Singapore – a travel vlog on how Singapore had “no vibe” recently went viral, with both Singaporeans and foreigners weighing in.

But haven’t Hong Kong and Singapore earned enough cool points as locations of Hollywood blockbusters from Transformers to Crazy Rich Asians? What is boring? What is cool? What makes a city lovable to some and loathsome to others? What makes cities tick and how do we make them more memorable?

Architects work with measurable, quantifiable and gradable standards. Calls for iconic or green buildings are typically met with plans for taller structures or carbon footprint calculations.

But instead of just designing buildings and cities, should architects and urban planners also be concerned about unmeasurable aspects like feelings of attachment and inclusion?

Design should address some of the most urgent issues in our everyday lives. Inclusion, connection and attachment affect all of us and should top the agenda for governments, societies and even businesses. In finding new and better ways to live sustainably, could architects and designers create spaces that embody these values?

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In 2020 and 2021, the DesignSingapore Council conducted a study for The Loveable Singapore Project Report. The findings were distilled into a list of six intangible attributes that mattered most to people – agency, attachment, attraction, connection, freedom and inclusion.

The report put front and centre the community’s voices and reflections on the spaces they live, work and play in. It shifted the mindset of architects and planners, challenging them to go beyond design briefs and consider society’s needs and wants.

Getting to the bottom of that often starts with asking the right questions. Singapore sought to do just that at the Venice Architecture Biennale last year.

“When is Enough, Enough? The Performance of Measurement” was the title of the exhibition at the Singapore pavilion, where participants answered questions to help determine whether they felt any agency, attachment, attraction, connection, freedom or inclusion in spaces and buildings.

Harnessing visualising artificial intelligence (AI) software, artists created animations from thousands of frames, presented as interactive questionnaires. Looking at mash-ups of forests, public housing corridors, animals and everyday city scenes, visitors pondered questions such as: “How much should we tame nature?” and “When was the last time you felt like an outsider?”. The results were intriguing.

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More than 97,000 visitors to the Singapore pavilion in Venice shared their thoughts with us and the data showed a strong appreciation for the preservation of heritage and nature.

For example, one in two respondents preferred old buildings to be experienced in their original condition or entirely subsumed into an eclectic district without discernible distinctions between modern and old.

We ran the exhibition again at this month’s Singapore Archifest and are collating the data. There is already enough evidence for us architects to consider a different approach. In the pursuit of the good, and the good for all, in the design of schools, homes and workplaces that make up our cities, we are guided by a multitude of standards and codes. But there are reasons we should consider alternatives.

In architect, verb: The New Language of Building, a book published last year by Reinier de Graaf, an entire chapter is dedicated to the phenomenon of liveability indexes. Tracing the word “liveable” from its 1608 origins in England, when towns suffered severe outbreak of the bubonic plague, to its use in modern urban discourse, he shows how its meaning has shifted.

In 2005, about 30 years after establishing liveability as an objective in the growth of Greater Vancouver in Canada, Vancouver earned the top position in The Economist’s Global Liveability Index. In that time, the city almost doubled its population but this also led to an increase in house prices of more than 300 per cent.

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Liveability has become less about the protection of local communities and more of a mainstream factor in the built environment and real estate market. Thus, it might no longer be enough to rely solely on the performance indicators that liveability indexes are comprised of. Expanding gauges beyond liveability is timely.

Singapore’s designation as a Unesco Creative City of Design in 2015, the same year as its golden jubilee, is noteworthy in pointing us towards what “beyond liveability” could be.

Seen in this light, the Lovable Singapore report is a study that could provide yet another playbook for innovation in design. Measuring concepts like connection to our community, attachment to places or the lived experience of agency to effect change in our surroundings could bring new frameworks for considering the success of projects.

In both Hong Kong and Singapore, how can we preserve the unique value of our buildings and spaces? In transforming from third world into first in a matter of decades, what bonds and intangibles might we have lost? And could we turn love lost into new-found love for spaces and buildings through planning and design?

This could be a pivotal time to align our work between the tangible and intangible, to more closely reflect, embody and foster society’s values.

Adrian Lai is a Singaporean architecture practitioner-educator, principal of MetaArchitecture and adjunct assistant professor at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Architecture