Singapore Chinatowns Modernist Icon People's Park Complex, which is examined for the possibility of preservation, will later practice a fresh red and white look in 2025.
The selection of the colors has led to some, including one of the architects of the building, Mr. Koh Seow Chuan, connected it to Singapore's national flag – which is suitable because in 2025, the 60th anniversary of the independence of the country, works.
“However, the color scheme was not selected specifically for the marking of SG60,” Claire Dixon-Lim from People's Park Complex told The Straits Times.
It was “recommended by a designer and approved by the management of the building,” she said, adding that the facade direction and the new paint works will end before the fourth quarter of 2025.
The mixed development, which was completed in 1973, was recently repainted in 2009 when her then orange and grumbling facade made a seat for a yellow-green coat that is currently being painted.
It must now be rediscovered because the existing painting of facade reporting work that is required is influenced.
In November 2024, the Peal's Park Complex building and building authority carried out a facade test and corrected defects.
From December 1, 2024 to August 15, 2025, the work was carried out, Ms. Dixon-Lim said in a letter to the owners and occupiers of the development in November 2024.
The 31-story layer complex is examined by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (Ura) for preservation.
In February, the agency announced that it had completed a structural examination of the building that will accompany the evaluation of the Ura “to determine the potential of maintaining the building towards renovation plans”.
The complex was one of the first mixed commercial and private residential buildings in the region. It was also the largest shopping complex in Singapore when it opened, and the country's first shopping complex with atrium.
Pioneer Singapore Architects William Lim, Tay Kheng Soon and Mr. Koh from Design Partnership Architects, known today as DP architects, were behind his design.
In conversation with the ST, Mr. Koh said that the concrete facade of the building was originally unpainted and was common in modernist buildings after the Second World War.
“Fair concrete was fashionable after the war when most countries were poor,” he noted.
The non-profit Heritage group Docomomo Singapore said in an article about the complex that its fair finish was liable to the modernist commandment of the “honest material expression”.
The modernist architecture extends around the 1930s to the 1980s and includes styles such as brutalism with which the People's Park is connected.
In general, modernist architecture is associated with minimalism and emphasizes the function of decoration.
Mr. Koh said the building was only painted in the late 1980s. Archive photos from the late 1980s and 1990s show that the complex had a largely beige color scheme.
This was replaced by an orange-green program, most likely when the building was subjected to a 1988 dollar facelifting that started in 1998.
The Chinese characters Zhu Fang or “Pearl Square” were probably added to the facade during this work – an allusion to the location of the building at the foot of the hill of Pearl.
The hill was named after Captain James Pearl, who commanded the Indiana – the ship that Sir Stamford Raffles, the modern founder of Singapore, brought to the island in 1819.
In 2009 the building was re-painted in a brighter yellow and green scheme.
It is this yellow-and-green scheme that is now replaced by a red and white coat.
The architectural photographer Darren Soh, who has published photos of the new paintwork since the beginning of April, said he had the feeling that the bright red being was a very polarizing color, and added that “they either love or do not”.
“Everything and everyone near People's Park Complex will now have a red color when light seems bright on the facade,” said Mr. Soh.
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Ng Keng Gene is a correspondent of the Straits Times and reports on questions related to land use, urban planning and inheritance.
Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Approval required for reproduction
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