Dilapidation

"The landscape value system, and particularly the aesthetic it produces, unfairly condemns whole areas of industrial cityscape, of non-landscape. And as long as the vestiges of landscape endure, partisans of cityscape and great industry must fight a lonely battle, one contrary to the common wisdom of Americans descended from the makers of landscape" - John Stilgoe, Common Landscape of America 1580-1845.

***

One thing you don't see much of in Singapore are old, once-proud buildings in varying states of disrepair. None of the run-down brownstones and Georgian places you get in some New York and London neighbourhoods. Here, places either get restored or torn down and replaced by something modern.

So it was nice to look up at this Loke Yew Street building (opposite the Malaysian High Commission) and see those columns - an old attempt at elegance? - and also see that people are clearly still living in the apartments upstairs. I like little touches of the haphazard.

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