Congratulations to Marc & Chantal Design for winning gold in the Institution and Exhibition Space category at the Asia Pacific Interior Design Awards for the Civic Education Centre exhibition at the Home Affairs Bureau. Nice to have been part of the team.

Nice to see Frame Magazine feature this project which I worked on with Marc & Chantal Design. It was a challenge to define the storyline and interpret the content into a way which a notoriously skeptical audience (teenagers) would find engaging but I think the end result is sufficiently intriguing. The Gallery divided into five segments titled, My Room, My Home, My Neighbourhood, My City and My Country. From self-image to interpersonal skills, each segment of the exhibition is intended to encourage the young students to think for themselves, interact with their peers and take ownership of their experiences.

The CERC can be found at 7/F, Youth Square, 238 Chai Wan Road, Chai Wan. Opening hours are Monday to Friday 9:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m., Saturday to Sunday 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., Closed Public Holidays

One of the latest additions to the Marina Bay skyline and Singapore’s cultural landscape is the ArtScience Museum. It’s self-proclaimed iconic architecture is intended to house “blockbuster” temporary exhibitions on … well anything that can be linked to art or science.

Designed by Moshe Safdie, the building form is intended to represent a lotus flower or, in the words of Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson, the welcoming hand of Singapore. It promises 21 galleries with a total area of 6,000 square metres.

The permanent galleries in the upper levels of the building set the museum’s conceptual stall out in an exhibition called ‘ArtScience: a journey through creativity’. Divided into Curiosity, Inspiration and Expression, they provide a cursory impression of the ways in which art and science are linked.

Quite reasonably, they aim to provide a taster of the subject intended to whet the appetite. But given that these sections anchor the raison d’etre of the entire enterprise they feel curiously empty calories, particularly as the ArtMuseum itself is constantly referred to as genius on the par with the likes of Leonardo da Vinci.

I don’t know the answer to “where do Art and Science meet?” but I am pretty sure that getting the masking right on a simple slide projection to include the whole question would be a good start.

The Museum was running three exhibitions when we visited – ‘Dali: mind of a genius’, ‘Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds’ and ‘Van Gogh Alive – the Exhibition’ – which I will be reviewing in subsequent posts. Suffice to say the spaces within the building which work best as gallery spaces are in fact below ground – in other words freed from the constraints of the “iconic” architectural form.

Opening hours are 10am-10pm (last admission 9pm) including public holidays. Tickets cost S$30 for adults and S$17 for children (2-12 years). There is a combination ticket that includes admission to the Sky Garden.

Interesting review of the Rem Koolhaas exhibition ‘Cronocaos‘ at the New Museum in New York. First shown at the 2010 architectural biennale in Venice, it is a representation of what happens when an aged city is repackaged for tourists – so losing whatever made it vibrant and distinctive in the first place. Startingly, he claims that 12% of the world’s surface has been earmarked by conservation organisations such as UNESCO. I can’t help think that there is a bit of special pleading going on here where the architectural world now somehow feel that they are being poorly treated by a cabal of preservationists, governments and developers. Replace preservationists with architects and I think you get what is the general feeling amongst most communities around the world threatened by “progress”.

I remember about 10 years ago being invited to the monolithic National Museum on the edge of Tiananmen Square for a briefing with about half a dozen other museum design companies hungry for a slice of the Mainland pie. The numbers we were being told were staggering – 200,000 square metres of exhibition space accompanied by the inevitably poor per square metre spend. Well, now we all have a chance to see the result: http://www.chnmuseum.cn/

And a fascinating review of the outcome and process.

If, as you are passing Pacific Place in Admiralty, you chance to look up from a bus or a tram you might just glimpse the banners and glowing interior of the Drug InfoCentre – Hong Kong’s primary drug public education exhibition.

Opened in 2004 by the Narcotics Division, I worked with Met Studio Design to come up with the concept and implementation of the design. We were pleasantly surprised by how open the Narcotics Division were to new suggestions about how to communicate with a notoriously difficult audience – teenagers.

We knew that if we just said “Say no to drugs” we would lose credibility in the eyes of those we most wanted to reach. Our audience was not the good boys and girls who were not likely to take drugs anyway, but the “too-cool-for-school” brigade. If we could engage them in the debate, draw them into a discussion, then we might have a chance of dispelling some of the myths around drugs and deliver some facts about their harmful effects.

So we designed the exhibition as a tool for debate, we avoided a moralizing tone or oppressive ‘voice of authority’. Instead, we used the words of people who had ‘been there done that’ and the experiences of those whose lives have been touched by drugs for impact.

All of this was underpinned by hard dispassionately presented medical fact on the physical and psychological effects of drugs.

The intention above all was to stimulate debate and learning, which can be carried on in other areas of the space, at home or in the classroom.

I went back to see how it was doing after nearly 5 years and am pleased to say it looked in rather good nick. James Norton’s graphics in particular still look as edgy and creative as the man himself. There is also a good library on all things drug education-related of great use for parents and teachers.

Here’s a short video introduction from the Narcotics Division.

The Hong Kong Drug InfoCentre is free of charge and located at Roof Floor, Low Block, Queensway Government Offices, 66 Queensway, Hong Kong (Admiralty MTR Station – Exit C1). Tel: 2867 2831

In my capacity as heritage and interpretive planning consultant for the revitalization of the Central Police Station in Hong Kong, I was a speaker at a very enjoyable and positive Cityspeak forum where the future plans for the site were put forward by Herzog de Meuron, Purcell Miller Tritton, Rocco Design and the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Mike Moir. The forum was ably hosted by the ever provocative Paul Zimmerman.

Video highlights can be found here and here.

I decided to go and have a look at Simon Birch’s (one of Hong Kong’s leading contemporary artists) new multimedia installation project.

This from the programme notes referring to that old chestnut Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’: “In Simon Birch’s intricate, labyrinthine installation project, Hope & Glory, [the] first step of the hero’s journey …. is enacted on myriad levels, across time and space. It is enacted when we step into the immersive environment of the installation; in the memories of wonder and fear that flash through us; in the spectacular collisions of history and imagination that implode around us; and in the multi-sensory pathways that lead us precariously towards the artist’s vision.”

I am so glad I didn’t read the programme before going around the space otherwise I would have had the raging hump (a technical term). As it was, my initial reaction was: “This is what would happen if a 13 year-old could graduate from art school.” Then something happened.

I started to have a reaction to everything I came across. In no particular order: uh?, ooh, bollocks (I inexplicably become foul-mouthed and indignant in contemporary art exhibitions), nonsense, great, shite (told you), cheeky, teenage bedroom, she’s nice, so’s that horse, awwww. Not deep insights, I’ll grant you. But reactions none the less.

More from the programme: “The paradox is that (like any circus) the physical materials from which this experience is created are mundane, of the present world: wood and paint, plastic and metal, computers and holograms. What this means, of course, is that the tools to transport ourselves are already here with us. We only need to understand and assemble them in a new way.” So …. there you have it: apparently you can make interesting things from stuff.

Back in the darkness, a fleet of Star Wars spacecraft was flying from a screen where a couple of blokes were amusing themselves in Halo over a skateboard half-pipe towards a white pile of rubbish surrounded by videos of people covered in balloons and foam blocks.

Many of the works (or “cells” as the programme would have it) were disarmingly personal about their influences – Star Wars, Superman, Halo. So I was surprised when I heard Birch talk about some of the thinking behind the work being a reflection on the hopes and eventual negativity of imperial dreams: Simon Birch talks about Hope and Glory.

In fact, there are supposedly three layers of inspiration – the Hero’s Journey, the hopes and negative impact of Empire, and Circuses (‘cos they were Victorian too). Sorry, I got the circus bit but the rest passed me by. Maybe I’m thick. Or maybe that’s the sort of thing you need to write in proposals to get a government grant for contemporary art these days.

Apart from the exhibits, what’s really interesting about the whole thing was the collaborative process involving around 100 people that it took to put it together. Birch gives you a blow-by-blow account of this at monkeymodified.blogspot.com

This is certainly a major art event for Hong Kong and deserves your support. And it’s not-for-profit. Go and have your own reactions.

It runs at Artistree, 1/F Cornwall House, Taikoo Place, Island East until 30th May. Open 10am to 8pm. Entry is free.

Despite the somewhat tacky entrance sign, The Goldfish Pavilion is a quite elegant addition to the Giant Panda Adventure – forming as it does one side of the fictional mountain village into which visitors emerge after seeing the pandas and other animals.

First of all a disclosure: I worked on the interpretive concept with Hypsos Leisure Asia and I’m glad to say that the final product is very close to our original idea – detailed by Hanson Roberts. We wanted to present the goldfish story in three parts – Wild, Treasured and Celebrated.

In ‘Wild’, we tell the story of how natural mutations were first noticed in captive  carp.

At the heart of the attraction is the Chinese Treasure Box – a visual and environmental metaphor for the esteem in which the scholarly pursuit of breeding and admiring the wide varieties of goldfish is held.

The way in which goldfish have been viewed as objets d’art is underlined by their display alongside artefacts in curio cabinets.

The final Celebrated area looks at the significance of goldfish in Chinese cultural life – especially around festivals such as New Year.

All-in-all a very enjoyable little jewel of an exhibit.

Soon after it opening, we got along to the Giant Panda Adventure. First a disclosure – I worked on the interpretive planning throughout the public areas of the attraction with Hypsos Leisure Asia. So, I was keen to see the finished result.

We wanted messages about how precious the key endangered species that had been selected for housing through the attraction integrated into the environment. Here, as part of the Chinese Alligator enclosure, a message about the role that these “national treasures” play in inspiring art and enriching our lives is carved into a column supporting the viewing canopy.

The concept behind the Giant Panda Adventure is to raise awareness about a number of species that are endangered in China using Ocean Park’s Giant Panda as the draw. The first animals that visitors encounter is the impressive Chinese Alligator.

Kids can collect brass rubbings of the treasures as they journey through the adventure.

Soon you enter a mountain pass as you ascend to a hidden valley where the pandas live. You get glimpses of the elusive creature through a bamboo grove and then …

… you arrive at a kind of panda shangri-la designed by Hanson Roberts. They have taken great care to make the enclosure naturalistic and varied enough to keep its inhabitants interested. There are plenty of places to climb, roll and recline.

Along the way, information is conveyed through signage that we wanted to make feel part of the setting – as if they were clues left by park rangers or villagers along the path until …

… you reach the Research Camp where …

… helpful rangers introduce you to unique aspects of Giant Panda physiology, diet and behaviour. And then we saw the star attraction ambling by ….

… before settling down to have lunch. This was close to the glass dividing the public from the enclosure so we could only think that the pandas are quite at home already.

One problem we spotted was that a laptop with an interactive program for the public had been placed in direct sunlight making it difficult to view.

But at the end of the day, the animals were the real attraction … especially the endearing and active Red Pandas. The Asian Small-clawed Otters that were due to be at the attraction had not arrived yet but when they do they will be even more competition for the Giant Pandas in the cuteness stakes.

Your journey ends at a mountain village …

dedicated to conservation.