How many of us recall the Singapore of our childhood looking completely different from the Singapore of today? Considering how quickly the buildings and structures come and go, in a manner of speaking, we as Singaporeans have long become used to living in a state of flux, a constant interim, so to speak, where we are keenly cognizant of how nothing lasts forever. But that doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. After all, change is the only constant in life, and suggests that we’re forever and always adapting and keeping up with the times, something that the 2023 edition of the annual Archifest seeks to explore, under direction of new Festival Director Calvin Chua, who runs design practice Spatial Anatomy and and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

Calvin was first approached to take up Festival directorship in 2022, but was unable to do so due to his commitments, as a Visiting Professor at the Korea National University of Arts. Now that he’s back though, Calvin makes his aims abundantly clear, aligning the festival to the Singapore Institute of Architects’ (SIA) goals of exploring tenets of the architect profession, discipline and industry through the festival. “Every director brings something new to the table, each with their own agenda,” says Calvin. “For me, I see the importance of marrying the idea of industry with the relationship architects have with clients, the public, and developers, alongside a degree of intellectual inquiry. Archifest becomes a platform to address both that and the pressing issues surrounding the industry today.”

Calvin has experience aplenty under his belt, was previously involved with SIA even before becoming Festival Director, working on projects such as the Paya Lebar Air Base Master Plan, while also contributing to architecture journals. “At Spatial Anatomy, we see ourselves mostly as a research lab for design practice of all scales, from built projects from single rooms to a city, and operate across different mediums, from exhibitions to research projects,” says Calvin. “The aim has always been to open up bigger discourse and ideas, from urban rejuvenation to adaptive reuse, which all come into play during Archifest, where we address such themes through different mediums.”

Through its 80+ events, turning the city into a hub for architecture for a month from 29th September to 28th October, Archifest ends up becoming a platform for dialogue, itself conceptualised and driven by conversations with partners and friends Calvin engaged over the last nine months or so, searching for common interests and concerns that he felt needed to be brought to light. “This year’s theme focuses on how cities are in a constant state of transformation and in transition, and what kind of implication our actions now might have on the future. It’s also a call to action, in that we have design incubators looking at pressing issues facing the urban environment, particularly with the regeneration of health spaces,” says Calvin. “We aren’t looking for solutions during the festival per se, but ideas on how to address and uncover these interim aspects.”

One big example of this lies in the Archifest Pavilion, an annual feature considered the centrepiece of the festival which has been diffracted into six dispersed Urban Installations around the festival site of Kampong Gelam. In the spirit of adaptability in an “Interim” future, Archifest 2023 has invited emerging designers to create six distributed urban installations to embody the “Interim City”.

One example of this is Faiz bin Johri’s Scaffold Bridge Over Fence, a bridge-like structure that spans across and connects the open Sultan Gate Park to the fenced grassy area behind the festival house–or what was previously known as Pondok Java, a lodging and community space for Javanese immigrants that became the bustling centre of Javanese culture in Kampong Gelam until it was demolished in 2003.

Elsewhere, Dulang-Dulang by Syazwan Hanif and Syafiq Jubri transforms what is currently a parking zone for coaches and cars into an inviting public gathering space that encourages congregation and conversations. Inspired by the Dulang, a steel tray used for communal eating specific to Singapore and Malay culture, the design multiplies the circular geometry of the tray and manipulates them to create a common table, while the wavy seating evokes associations of the motion of fragrance wafting from freshly prepared meals. Spices commonly used in preparation of Malay meals and other plants local to the Kampong Gelam district will be incorporated into the installation.

“I think these installations add a new, more playful side to Kampong Gelam, and helps us see a new way of looking at the idea of the ‘interim’,” says Calvin. “And the idea of the interim isn’t foreign to regular Singaporeans either – we think of temporary bus-stops or other infrastructure, used as stopgap measures, set to disappear over time. So we’re inviting the public to join us and formulate our own definitions of interim, thinking of it beyond land use and functionality, to think of how almost every public space changes over time.”

“Sometimes we need to readjust our definitions of what ‘interim’ means. We see cities like Tokyo or Mumbai, which seem permanent, but they actually continually transform every few years, with regards to land use and function,” adds Calvin. “For us in Singapore, we might want to think of land. use in terms of length of time, where we need to differentiate between quick transformations or temporary activations, and more long term change, like weeklong structures for events like the F1 Grand Prix, or strata malls with up to 30 years. We end up wondering, especially for the longer term buildings, that even though we know they won’t last forever, can we preserve the spirit and community that’ve been formed during their lifetime, or does it end up an empty shell despite our efforts to hold on to the facade?”

“Perhaps, with buildings like Golden Mile, we can find ways to migrate the community, and pave the way for a more graceful decommissioning and proper farewell, as opposed to having to preserve the building itself. And we also have to consider the environmental perspective as well, where tearing down buildings and building new ones all the time just isn’t sustainable, with too many carbon emissions. So in future, we have to consider how we can extend the life cycle of buildings as well, and maintain the socio-communal aspects of it.”

As a lecturer and educator, Calvin believes in letting students come to their own conclusions, shaping their world view via experiences and inquiry rather than providing a standard definition or answer. Calvin himself recalls his own student days fondly, having graduated from the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. “I do strongly believe in the importance of networks and who you study with that influences you, and you become a product of that by the time you graduate,” says Calvin. “In the architecture practice, relationships are so important, and SIA has even started a genealogy project to trace who worked for who, and their influence is clearly felt in all that they do.”

“Thinking about Singapore culture compared to my time in London, I think it’s so important to have all these links and conversations between practitioners of different backgrounds, and how they all offer their own unique enquiries. It’s important to bring up the industry as a whole, to cross-pollinate ideas and raise awareness of social issues, and cultural sensibilities and how different experiences have shaped our approaches to them, like how my time in London gave me a more neoliberal approach to urban development.”

Coming back to Archifest itself, Calvin emphasises the production of ideas, and how it evokes the thought that there are far more interrelated concepts and intersections in society than we might initially think. “You know, sometimes I think about how the Berlin Wall itself is just a wall, but it’s still architecture, and how something like that can somehow become a key part of geopolitics,” says Calvin. “These days, we can’t not be aware of things happening elsewhere, and it’s so important to connect to everyone from everywhere in this modern global melting pot of cultures, and have all these constant dialogues with others.”

“For the general public though, we have our perennial favourite Architours that takes people around various buildings to discuss design, alongside incubators. to kickstart conversations. We have ‘human libraries’ to engage in discussions, workshops dealing with issues of climate change, ageing society, food resilience and healthcare, and we really do want to add new laters and bring all these stakeholders and partners in to mix ideas, and hopefully, the Festival House becomes this hub for such conversations to happen.”

Archifest then, is really about making connections and formulating new ways of seeing and thinking about the spaces we’re surrounded by. “How can we maximise a space to the best of its ability? How can we make whatever we design better somehow? These are some of the questions we hope we cover during the festival,” says Calvin. “I’ve participated in several festivals before, both locally and internationally, and so much of a festival is dependent on who they invite and bring to the fore. Each has a unique structure and target audience, and it’s been fascinating to see the kinds of discussions emerge from unexpected pairings, like how in Lisbon, we saw the organisers invite their ex-classmates who were now working all over the world, and had speakers from Chile, USA, the Netherlands, Mexico, Argentina, Africa and Europe, practical spanning the entire Atlantic Ocean. And hopefully in future, we can continue to grow our own Archifest too.”

“We don’t want to exclude people, and we want to provide as fertile a ground as possible to sow and generate ideas. Even if we can’t tackle issues immediately, like the rising cost of living and affordability of houses, we can spark ideas for further investigation, or at least think about how we can mitigate it,” Calvin concludes. “It’s not entirely up to architects and designers to solve everything at once, but what we can do is to ameliorate these issues within the limitations of a system, to make living more sustainable and enjoyable.”

Archifest 2023 runs from 29th September to 28th October 2023. Full programme and more information available here