AR5004 City State World – Singapore’s Architectural Histories in Global Connections

This is an introductory course to the architectural and urban history of Singapore. It introduces key buildings and urban forms in the history of the city-state, and provides a rigorous framework for understanding how they came about and transformed over time. Drawing on the latest interdisciplinary scholarship in architecture and related fields, we explore the diverse actors, variegated socio-cultural processes, and complex politics involved in producing and consuming Singapore’s built environment. The course seeks to provide transnational narratives of Singapore’s built environment that go beyond colonialist and nationalist discourses to understand Singapore architecture broadly in connective and comparative perspectives.