The changing landscape of Singapore, as recorded in a new book from Do Not Design

Singapore-based studio Do Not Design has published a book that puts a mirror to their home city and its changing landscape. Architecture and the Architect: Image-making in Singapore is a sort of a catalogue of the buildings that have been lived in and with; accompanied by anecdotes from residents, security guards and office workers.

Split into chapters according to property use, the photographs are interjected with interviews with the architects responsible, such as Tay Kheng Soon who built the city’s People’s Park Complex in 1970 – a building meant to “recapture the life of the open-air park… by recreating a bazaar-like atmosphere in its large internal atrium”.

The book is beautifully designed and the soundbites from people living in and around the buildings humanise an otherwise sparse landscape. Though in a publication set out to convey the people and image of a city, the photographs are lacking in that very thing – its population. Whether this is due to trends in architectural photography, or in fact reflective of life in Singapore it’s certainly an issue to be raised when recording public life.