Ang Mo, Ah Beng and Rojak: Singapore’s architectural orientalism

ABSTRACT Edward Said in Orientalism kicked off the age of postcolonialism in a global context, which suggests not only transdisciplinary applicability but also a form of counter-discourse against the canons of Western intellectualism. This paper borrows this awareness to examine contemporary Singaporean architecture. In Orientalism, Said alerted his readers that discourse often is more powerful and influential than the targeted reality; the analytical unfolding of power/knowledge manipulation in discourse can be a bidirectional tool for understanding the relationship of domination. Architecturally, Singapore’s open-market strategy for the political economy since its independence in 1965 can be seen as a forceful ideology of Orientalism imposed on the built environment, both from the native people’s self-positioning as Singaporeans and this city-state’s internal colonisation accomplished by centrifugal manipulation via external and interventionist forces. As important representations, Singapore’s operative modernity, Sinophone identity and cultural-political hybridity are noticeable through the slang descriptors of Ang Mo, Ah Beng and Rojak. The seemingly objective characteristics of placeless internationalisation and subjective elitism perceived from the contemporary state and identity construction of Singaporean architecture hence are further explained through observations from a lens of Orientalism.


Introduction
Rem Koolhaas, in a 1995 book that includes his discourse on Singapore's built environment, made a strong argument for seeing Singapore as a result of tabula rasa, resulting in heavy debate on this discourse, the physical built environment in Singapore and the identity construction of Asian architecture: Almost all of Singapore is less than 30 years old; the city represents the ideological production of the past three decades in its pure form, uncontaminated by surviving contextual remnants. It is managed by a regime that has excluded accident and randomness: even its nature is entirely remade. It is pure intention: if there is chaos, it is authored chaos; if it is ugly, it is designed ugliness; if it is absurd, it is willed absurdity. Singapore represents a unique ecology of the contemporary. (Koolhaas et al. 1995) Within the debate, amongst many, William Lim's argument accusing Koolhaas of casting "a Western gaze caught in an image of a distorting mirror" (Lim 2005) is one clear voice opposing Koolhaas's argument. However, Lim in a later manuscript interestingly no longer denies entirely the tabula rasa as a strategy that has accompanied the development of Singapore's built environment (Lim 2006). That is to say, the open-market economy that has been imposed by the Singaporean government after independence indeed impacts on Singapore's built historicity to suggest a sense of being centrifugally international. This sense of internationalisation displays characteristics of the architecture of placelessness which, along with the open-market economy executed in Singaporean society, creates a shallow foundation for cultural identification that has long been the plight of Singapore. Architecturally, in recent years a strong focus on reflecting tropicality showcases a centripetal attempt to counterbalance this anxiety about culture and identity construction. This attempt has been implemented through a discourse of elitism from both a top-down perspective of shaping the city-state as a "city in a garden" by mimicking the Western notion of the "garden city" (HistorySG 1967), and an academic and professional perspective of reifying spatially the idea of sustainability (Bishop, Phillips, and Yeo 2004). As a consequence, the contours of Singapore's built manifestations are drawn with a binary benchmark for judgment -there are criticisms and compliments made regarding the phenomena of moving towards internationalisation or concentrating on the innovation and uniqueness of Singaporean locality.
In this paper, I propose an alternative framework of analysis from a postcolonial perspective. Through this examination, it is my argument that, without taking a position from either end of the spectrum regarding architectural manifestations in contemporary Singapore with a dualistic conclusion, there is potential for rethinking Singaporean or even Asian architecture's conundrums for subjectivation, as well as moderating the relationship with Western epistemology in a context of power/knowledge domination. In my analysis, I borrow Edward Said's notion of Orientalism as an analytical standpoint to examine the culturalpolitical interplay between native and external elements that are represented in both urbanism and architecture in contemporary Singapore.
Edward Said published his best-known work, Orientalism, in 1978 and soon the notion had become shorthand for an ideological diversion in order to maintain a relationship of domination. This relationship continues the impact of colonialism which suggests a broader interplay between a coloniser and the colonised. As his argument, Said defines Orientalism through four basic categories (Said 1979): First, Orientalism is created by scholars who deliver, study and write information about the Orient, and through all these practices, the authority of representing the Orient is established. Second, Orientalism is created through the confirmation of the Occident, based on the ontology and epistemology of the West that excludes the non-West; Orientalism displays the imagery of this sense of absence. Third, Orientalism is created by the universality implied in the dichotomy between the Western civilisation and the undercivilisation of the non-West. Seen from a colonial view, because time and progress were frozen in the discursive imagination of the non-West, the superiority of the West is built upon the inferiority of the non-West. Last, Orientalism is created as the representation of the West that intends to possess domination over the non-West; this domination is executed through empowerment of a Western discourse regarding the Orient.
Of course, the notion of Orientalism as claimed by Edward Said has caused great debate since the book was published and disseminated to the global context of scholarship, mainly regarding the notion's generalisation and the intentional dichotomy between a coloniser and the colonised in his discursive analysis. In other words, not everyone agrees with Said's criticism and argument that the West creates an influential and ideological imagination towards the non-West as the representation of nothing but a power/knowledge colonisation. This point is made by Said particularly regarding the relationship between the West and the Arab World to generalise the situation in a global context. Amongst many, one main voice against Orientalism argues that products of imperialism do not necessarily suggest incorrectness and unfairness, and vice versa. As a representative individual, the Indian Marxist Ajaz Ahmad in his well-known book, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992), argues that Said possesses a double standard between the use of narratives of High Humanism and their relationship with the colonial project (Ahmad 1992). Ahmad accuses Orientalism of being a notion of Edward Said's emotive mindset, which borrows Western epistemology as a reference to criticise the non-West without acknowledging the positive aspects of such knowledge. All these polemics of postcolonial theory and criticism were well noted in late-twentieth-century academia, but in recent years scholars and critics have become less attentive to postcolonial notions due to both the collapse of the imperial bureaucracy and the rise of various more powerful and more applicable ideas such as globalisation, neo-liberalism, and so forth.
From an architectural perspective, since the publication of Said's Orientalism, the notion in architecture was mostly elaborated as built objects or design/planning ideas established by a "coloniser's" mindset that applied a patronised approach to the architecture of the "colonised", and this phenomena can be sourced widely including in professional discourses, practices built in the colonies, or even in the metropole. Sir Banister Fletcher's influential book A History of Architecture is one example that has been questioned under this awareness. The book sorted architecture in a global context into "historical" and "ahistorical" categories (Fletcher 1901), and the latter one obviously was resulted from a Eurocentric canon of architecture that echoes Said's argument of Orientalism. Specifically, Fletcher subordinated Japanese, Indian, Chinese, Ancient American and Saracenic architecture to be a historical, under-developed and uncivilised when compared to the historical, modern and enlightened European ancestry of architecture. In practice, the Eurocentric canons were also associated with the Orientalist thinking of "modern architecture". For instance, Le Corbusier who used Paris as the main foundation of his plan for rebuilding the capital city of Algeria can be considered as an Orientalist imagination (Akcan 2014). However, in modern Asia, India for example, the involvement of Le Corbusier in the building of Chandigarh and Louis Kahn in the design of the new Indian Institute of Management was subtly related to not only a coloniser's mindset but also an ideological transformation of the colonised. These projects were not be understandable without India's first prime-minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his interventionism of modernising and internationalising the country after independence. It is my argument that the Koolhaas case indicated in the very beginning of the paper implies even more complicated ambiguity and hence suggests a new demand of understanding Orientalism in the globalist age.
Although the term "Orientalism" is dated and contains some controversy, it is my argument that, as a theoretical notion, Orientalism is still a working and applicable perspective to engage in the discourse of epistemology today. Of course, to place and elaborate a philosophy such as Orientalism which has a clear historical and geographic map in a new time-space context is rather dangerous, as the conditions of such theorisation that were set in the original context do not necessarily fit a new form of spatiotemporality. However, perhaps like Michel Foucault's revolutionary attitude of promoting the philosophy of danger (Brossat 2012), the awareness of danger from the unusual thinking about things implies the emancipation of knowledge exploration from the blind of a particular angle, suggesting limits to further approaching the essence of these things. Perhaps also like Gilles Deleuze's proposition of seeing philosophy and its applications as mechanical operations (Deleuze and Guattari 1977), meanings emerge only through their connections. Deleuze believes that both human thought and targets that are approached by such thought are just abstract machines suggesting a decentralised and anti-context deterritorialisation; and that meaningful production emerges only when there are operative connections amongst different abstract machines. Most importantly, different combinations of connections produce different meaning indicators. In other words, the temporal and spatial conditions that usually refer to the mapping of an associative context become dynamic. An alternative association of a philosophical thought to an unexpected context stimulates the production of meaningful epistemology that was absent in the original setting of such thought. Hence in this paper I take this position to examine the contemporary built environment in Singapore from the angle of the theorisation of Orientalism. As a methodology, Singapore's characteristic cultural politics and urbanism are used to bridge the notion of Orientalism and the manifestations of architecture.

Current discourse on the postcolonial condition of Asian architecture
In current scholarly discourse on the postcolonial condition of Asian architecture, there are three main arguments that can be traced as notable methodologies. The first argues that Asian architecture as a condition reflecting colonial historicity shows a bottom-up process of subjectivation, and this process often results in architectural terms as a reification of nationalism. Abidin Kusno's research on Indonesian architecture based on Jakarta's architectural transformation after independence is one example (Kusno 2000). The second argument, on the contrary, highlights the subalternisation of Asian built objects being marginalised by colonial modernity, the phenomena of cultural colonisation and the conversion of colonialism into internal colonisation by local elites of the former colonies. Yat Ming Loo and Sen Guan Yeoh's careful studies of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, are representative works (Loo 2013;Yeoh 2014). The third argument pays attention to the idea of hybridity which mingles colonial trajectories and the postcolonial development of the (former) colonies as a design and architectural strategy that adapts exotic cultures and personalities into Asian architecture. Felipe Hernández's analysis of colonial architects' practice in Malaysia and their influence on local development after independence can be suggestive of this methodology (Hernández 2010).
There are two other types of discourse regarding Asian's architecture's postcolonial condition that are less dominant in current scholarship, but are thematically and theoretically insightful. Jiat-Hwee Chang's refinement of sustainability into tropicality as a form of Asian architecture's postcolonial condition is one example of the former type (Chang 2012). In Chang's study, the notion of postcolonial is employed to identify the state of development after the "official" colonial period. Chang argues that sustainability in today's architectural discourse is largely confined to Euro-American contexts and, from a postcolonial perspective, the focus on tropicality which is particularly noticeable in South and Southeast Asia as suggested by the showcases of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) can be seen as a more appropriate observation of such architectural themes in Asia. As his conclusion, Chang points to the need for historicisation, concern with power/knowledge, built forms' hybridisation, and the interactions between the local and the global as linking Asian architecture's postcolonial condition to the theme of sustainability.
The latter type of discourse does not affiliate with the diachronic division and sees the postcolonial condition not as a dichotomic transition, but more as a theoretical problematic. Ackbar Abbas's pivotal 1997 work on Hong Kong is one example of this type of study. Given that 1997 is a year nearly everyone sees as the crucial time that terminated the British Empire's official domination worldwide, Abbas (1997) uses the examination of architecture in Hong Kong to argue that the handover of Hong Kong to the Beijing government was just the beginning of another process of colonisation. Abbas stresses that the end of empire does not mean the end of capitalism, but only that capitalism has entered a new phase. That is to say, Abbas indicates that, with the end of imperialism, colonialism could take a global form and hence could decisively abandon the old imperial attitudes, becoming problematic and suggestive of contemporary Asia. Abbas also argues that dominant perspectives, such as patriotic fervour as a way of discoursing Asia's postcolonial condition, often is short-lived and without political outcome -"quasi-colonial" is a term in this sense that Abbas uses to translate globalism in an Asian way. His empirical selection of Hong Kong as a target is theoretically suggestive not only for my analysis of contemporary Singaporean architecture from a perspective of Orientalism, but also for most Asian built environments primarily in the maritime zone extending from Korea to Japan and along the coast of China to Taiwan and into Southeast and South Asia. This paper takes a position that is inspired by Abbas's (1997) theoretical insight into the postcolonial condition of Asian architecture, as the concern with the urban politics is by no means avoidable. The urban politics I mention here refers to the context of architectural manifestations which are significantly synonymous with the context of interventionism within a geopolitical locality, as is the case in Singapore.

Singapore and orientalism from a linguistic perspective
Lee Kuan Yew in 2011 published his memoir entitled My Lifelong Challenge: Singapore's Bilingual Journey. In this book, Lee highlights a theme: how the policy of bilingualism has become central and critical for Singapore as an independent city-state. As a crucial individual who was involved in and promoted what Singapore is moving towards today, this piece of discourse is argued to be a referential and suggestive basis for understanding Singapore's contemporary built environment. Since 1965, when Singapore separated from Malaysia as an independent sovereign state, the country has been characterised worldwide as a Chinese-centred society in which the ethnic Chinese citizenry comprises around 76% of the population; however, English has become the dominant language that interestingly subordinates Chinese, Malay and Tamil as secondary languages in both common usage and official use, not to mention the dialects that further divide these native languages. Some words emphasised by Lee in his book arguably represent the discourse from an official standpoint that elaborates this situation.
In the book's preface, Lee describes the experience of Singapore's language policy transformation, and he concludes that English was selected as the dominant language for reasons not only of uniting a new country that was in all aspects complicated due to colonial conditions prior to the end of World War II, but also in the national interest (Lee 2011). That is to say, based on the decision to make English the first language and native languages such as Chinese as second languages, Singaporeans today are trained to use English as the dominant language. For example, after kindergarten, every Singaporean student uses English increasingly from 75% to 100% of the time in school, and this increase is purposely determined by state policy.
Through the process of making this decision as a state leader, Lee displays a sense of ambivalence. On the one hand, he states that he clearly knows that English is not his mother tongue; on the other hand, he also was convinced that Singaporeans by no means can survive if they use their own mother tongues in Singapore, which makes its living by international trade. Showing similarities to Ashis Nandy's famous sentence on subjectifying India (Nandy 1983), 1 Lee consolidates this contradiction of his self-positioning for the state with the statement, "Singapore is Singaporeans" Singapore; Singapore is not Chinese's Singapore' (Lee 2011). However, what is different from Nandy's nationalist determination of underlining Indianness in contrast to the Othering non-West is Lee's distancing away from Singapore's majority culture and ethnicity whilst emphasising repeatedly the significance of it. Lee condemns those who criticise English as a language of a colony as foolish and narrow minded, and defends English-language education as the key to living in happiness compared to those who are educated in Chinese. At the same time, Lee also expresses his anxiety about Singapore becoming a society of the false West that makes all Singaporeans worship the superiority of the West and viewing native culture as inferior. This anxiety, unfortunately, has solidified through the increase of 'banana people' 2 in Singapore and Lee's realisation that: The Singaporeans should face the fact that they cannot survive if they do not handle English well. The Singaporeans should face the fact that, although Chinese is important [here he uses Chinese as a target whilst in fact including the other native languages], it has been decided to be a second language after all . . . the quality level of the Chinese language use is generally low . . . but if you want to increase the level then you have to forgo using English and it is impossible. (Lee 2011) This realisation shapes the de facto situation of most Chinese language-based Singaporeans today, in that they barely know things about Chinese culture such as the Records of the Three Kingdoms, 3 nor about Western culture such as William Shakespeare. The same consequence applies also to other Singaporeans who are ethnically rooted in the Malay and Tamil languages. Of course, this is a representation of the official discourse of Singapore; to some extent, this mediocrity of language and culture comprehension was what Lee wanted for Singaporeans, and Singaporeans today are in fact like what Lee imagined and planned.
It is my argument that Lee's emphasis on language policy implies similarities with architectural reflections of Singapore's top-down governance, which will be further analysed in the discussion below. On the other hand, there are some actual scenarios from the bottom-up society and urbanism of Singapore that provide a different face of the country, particularly in terms of parallels with Singaporean architecture. For example, from Lee's perspective, the unification of language was to build up the consensus of Singaporeans and to increase their competency, whereas this movement activated the chemistry of defining "multiplicity". The diversity of culture, religion and races in Singapore as a de facto situation, interestingly, only suggests a sense of formality in the built environment. For example, the determination to use English as an official and dominant language seems to place this city-state into an international and global context, yet the consequences of such determination did not go as Lee expected, but instead underscores Singapore's contemporary reputation with a tricky and shallow identity display. Lee's expectation turned out to be in his own imagination, even though it was imposed at a top-down and collective level through the state apparatus and has physically influenced not only the country but also its society, urbanism and architecture; the reality appears to be neither like Lee's expectations nor like the original scenario before the independence of this city-state. Neither the use of language nor the manifestations of architecture allow pure or orthodox classification, or attain the essence of hybridity. This phenomenon hence can be argued to be read as a form of postcoloniality that stands for a Singaporean sense, even an Asian sense, of Orientalism.
Edward Said's Orientalism arguably has become a "classic" work of postcolonial thought today. Since its publication, imperialism is understood in a particular way when compared to a conventional definition of it. Consequently, Orientalism as a notion is often described as a powerful narrative that bridges Western intellectualism and imperialism together as a form of conspiracy. As a core function of Orientalism, imperialism's representation, after its bureaucracy collapsed in the late twentieth century, is continuously influential. Inheriting an inferior status described in academic and literary work in the Western world, this recognition of the "non-West" continues to appear in various forms of power/knowledge manipulation. The notion of Orientalism nowadays is applicable to a wide range of postcolonial issues in current scholarship such as text, representation and Westcentrism that includes nearly every geographic region of the world.
As a key work, Orientalism also can be regarded as an indicator of Said's attitudinal shift from being a scholar who focused mainly on literary criticism to being as an individual who also cared about the pragmatic politics of society. Born in Jerusalem, Said experienced life both in the Arab World and the "West". Although he grew up in a religious family and environment, this religion, interestingly, was rooted not in Islam but Christianity. All these personal encounters made him a practitioner of the postcolonial notion of hybridity. Said once explained: I know that I may be speaking only for myself when I say that as an Arab Christian I have never felt myself to be a member of an aggrieved or marginal minority. Being an Arab, even for a non-Muslim, means being a member of what the late Marshall Hodgson called an Islamicate world, or culture. Any attempts at severing the tie are, I believe, doomed to failure. (Said 1995b) Based on such a backstory, the consciousness of cultural identification was always tricky for Edward Said, not to mention its association with a narrow sense of nationalism. In other words, it is a sense of hybridity that identifies the problematics of dualism, which is widely acknowledged in the theory and criticism of postcolonialism. Orientalism also highlights the process of construction the Western consciousness of recognition, which consolidates Western colonisation of the "non-West" and which helps place Western epistemology at the top of the hierarchy of the relationship of domination in a world context. This Western consciousness of recognition shows the outcome of Western-driven intellectual development from the Renaissance to the achievement of Eurocentric modernity. This recognition, built as the foundation of Western modernity, has since been treated as the benchmark for differentiating not only the past and the present, but also the West and the Orient. Most importantly, the differentiation in the contexts of time and geography has "legitimised" the dichotomy in colonialism that "empowered" Western imperialists to self-identify as dominators of the Orient. This dichotomy also maps the overlapping territories and intertwined histories between colonisers and the colonised (Said 1994) that form the interdependence of these two roles in colonisation. That is to say, according to Said's argument, without the representation of the colonial Other as inferior, Western subjectivity that is considered to be superior could not be built (Said 1979).
Edward Said particularly emphasises the interrelationship between Oriental studies and linguistics. This emphasis was made by highlighting Ernest Renan's remarks: Like Kant I believe that every purely speculative demonstration has no more validity than a mathematical demonstration, and can teach us nothing about existing reality. Philology is the exact science of mental objects. It is to the sciences of humanity what physics and chemistry are to the philosophic sciences of bodies. (Said 1979) Said believes that through academicians such as Renan, who borrowed the platform of linguistics to study the Orient, the Orientalist knowledge was represented in Western academia to reposition these academicians from the margins of Western epistemology to be the representatives of the authorities, as they not only provided knowledge about the Orient but also triggered the colonial ideology of today's Orientalism. The current state of Singapore's cultural politics as well as its registration in the built environment, I argue, can be similarly regarded as resulting from the impact of a sense of Orientalism, especially from a top-down standpoint of reinforcing the open-market economy through a series of power/knowledge manipulations that centre around the city-state's bilingual policy.
After independence, Singapore's governmental management has widely been acknowledged as a successful model for surviving a difficult and competitive larger environment. The so-called Singapore mode is extensively known from its successful educational and political policies that shape the social atmosphere and people as being characteristic of rationality (Tan 2018). Lee believes that the unification of language was the most important task in order to build up a young country founded on multiethnicity and multi-self-identity. Therefore, the so-called bilingual policy that imposes English as a first and dominant language, supported by the Singaporean people's mother tongues as second languages, has been forcefully executed in Singapore. Take Chinese Singaporeans as an example. As an ethnic group in Singapore they speak a good variety of Chinese dialects apart from Mandarin, not limited to Hokkien, Hakka, Teochew and Cantonese. But Singapore's bilingual policy decided on Mandarin to be the only and public language for communication, as Lee believed that speaking dialects would delay the country's development (Lee 2011). Furthermore, execution of this policy has imposed, interestingly, an Orientalist hierarchy of language application. At the beginning of implementation, for example, Chinese dialects were banned from Singapore's Chinese-language television channels, but foreign languages other than English were allowed. That is to say, for the Singaporean government, the dangers of allowing the use of Chinese dialects was stronger than invasion by foreign languages. This iconic rationality not unexpectedly registers in the Singaporean built environment as well, which explains Koolhaas's impression of "everything is managed". For example, the street names of Singapore's public housing blocks 4 are given numerical designations that void historical and cultural referents, not only to "clean" the public space but also to create a "locality" that is separated from the "global" domain suggested by the open-market economy by making the residential streets navigable and familiar only through residents' daily use and experience (Goh 2005). This naming system suggests an interventionist way of management by the Singaporean government after independence. When compared to the "language" of the landscape during the colonial era, a piece of "neutrality" has been inserted into the current state which replaces or overlaps parts of the previous manifestations and implies a new hierarchical arrangement of the everyday built environment.
The use of dialects in Singapore today is usually only noticed on special occasions such as during public elections, even though, through years of Englishlanguage education, the expression of dialects has become sadly poor. That is to say, the signifieda multilingual Singapore -is nowadays covered by a signifier of governmental formality or propaganda. This phenomenon re-emphasises the fact that the socalled bilingual policy centred around English and second languages which do not include the various dialects, is still subalternised. This situation leads to the ideological contradiction in Singaporean society that, despite English not being a native language of the majority of the Singaporeans, it has become the first language of nearly everyone, including those who speak it poorly, as English has been marked publicly as a benchmark of social status in Singapore today. Architecturally, the so-called void decks placed into Singapore's residential communities can be an echo of such a linguistic scenario. The void deck designed for public housing properties in Singapore is ideologically manifested by the public housing authority with the intention not only of moderating possible confrontations amongst different ethnic groups, religious beliefs and cultural identities, but also surveilling potential reactionaries, activists and their activities that might compromise the country's operation (Goh 2005). As a form of reflected instrumentality, the emptiness of the void deck, which is the ground floor of every public housing property, is an imposed form of neutrality which subordinates the existing diversity and historicity of culture, religion and ethnicity. The void deck symbolically becomes an insertion of the government's will, just like the use of English as the first and official language, into space. It is claimed that different activities can still be held in this void space by permission and according to the conditions of such spaces. Similar to the contradictions registered in the use of English in Singapore, the void deck does not belong to any native resident's cultural, religious or ethnic background but suggests a new type of spatial character that stands for the first contact of every resident-citizen's everyday life, even though utilisation of the void deck for actual application to various cultural, religious or ethnic activities is rather poor and limited.
As a matter of fact, there are still a considerable number of Singaporeans today who use a "second language" more frequently and fluently than English; but when speaking turns to writing and reading, both languages are weak. The unique situation raised up here is that most Singaporeans nowadays are only familiar with their second language on an elementary level, and their English skills are similarly just above the elementary level when compared to those who speak English as native language. Singapore has four official languages, English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, with Malay being the national language; but as a consequence of the unique situation described above, the real language that unites this city-state and her people, contemporary culture and society, is none of these languages but a new form called Singlish. Simply speaking, Singlish is a language based in English but mixing in the use of the "second languages" along with the various dialects of these second languages.
Singlish derives from the historicity of early generations of Singaporeans who did not speak English but were forced by the bilingual policy to use English as a compromised option. Today, Singlish not only has already become an intimate tool of communication for Singaporeans but also represents Singapore's national identity, as the awkward application of this "language" highlights the uniqueness of Singapore. It is common for some Singaporeans to use Singlish as a representation of casualness, as Singlish is a regulation-free apparatus, and these people may be able to speak "proper" English on formal occasions. It is also common for others to speak Singlish because they really do not handle English well, and Singlish is the only way that they can survive in the quotidian environment of Singapore. This generalisation of Singlish use consequently suggests a representational character of abstractness, as no matter how complex things are, they are displayed in simple and superficial but probably exaggerated forms. It is a fact that an environment lacking an opportunity to practise a powerful and dominating mother tongue makes it extremely difficult for residents to expertly use two imposed languages. The Singaporean system that relates cultural forms, including architecture, implied by the bilingual policy is instrumentality driven. The overall environment and atmosphere created by such a system thus advocates basic and rational standards, rather than aiming for spontaneity and depth. I argue that this situation also is reflected in the built environment as a contemporary form of historicity. In this sense, values of aesthetics and autonomy somehow are absent in many cases, as everything is represented without delicacy and cultivation, even those things registered with the signifier of friendliness and uniqueness to a subject called Singapore. To summarise such a phenomenon from a postcolonial perspective, this is a result of the impact of Orientalism in which discursive imposition powerfully influences reality, and that reality is being subalternised -even castrated -to display powerlessness in front of the authorities and social "elites" that dominate power/knowledge formation.
In the following discussion, I continue the parallels to linguistic analysis to examine Singapore's contemporary architecture ad urbanism from the angle of unfolding Orientalism with built cases. As a methodological design, three slang terms -Ang Mo, Ah Beng and Rojak -are argued to be different faces of architectural Orientalism in Singapore today.

Ang Mo and elitism
Ang Mo ("Red Hair") was a term coined by the local Hokkien-speaking people, commonly in places such as Singapore or Taiwan, who encountered European white people during the colonial era. Nowadays, when Singaporeans use the term Ang Mo, it is usually a slangy and simplified way to call out Caucasians. In most contexts, Singaporeans believe that there is no malice or offensiveness tagged to the term. However, as a signifier that directly implies a form of exoticness, it is my contention that Ang Mo functions ideologically as an indicator of deifying elitism in contemporary Singapore. This indicator is mentally ambivalent -on the one hand, it suggests jealousy by the general public, and it also suggests sarcasm in that the general public is subordinated and restrained by elitism in everyday life and in nearly every way.
Edward Said argues that based on a continuous discourse of Orientalism that employs a West-Orient dichotomy, critical matters that differentiate these two worlds are subject to different historical scenarios and to elites with power over Western knowledge and politics. In other words, the physical and geographic boundaries in the discourse of Orientalism are not the crucial matters, but the differentiation drawn by the politics and culture of the West in this power/knowledge production of discourse is (Said 1979). This discursive representation of the Orient often is seen as Western modernity's geopolitical strategy; that is to say, the foundations of Western modernity are based on a dualist methodology that consolidates its historicity. As argued by Said, Orientalism supplies this strategy with a counterproposition that, through the consolidation of the Orient as being the ancient and uncivilised part, the West has been given spatiotemporal verification as being the modern and civilised part of the world by the West herself. This argument can be analogous to the way Ang Mo is ideologically registered in Singaporean society as a token of elitism.
Lee Kuan Yew and the Singaporean government, in a way similar to the bilingual policy that centres around a language rooted not natively but externally, also repeatedly emphasised how qualified foreign personnel and foreign elites are important for the state to maintain its competency. This is the dominant situation in Singapore today and explains why the leading groups in all aspects are usually comprised of "elites" who are invited expatriates or native citizens trained and educated outside Singapore. Moreover, the relatively welcoming policy for foreign immigration (especially from China) and migration (especially from the Greater Western context) also displays the elitism practised in Singapore.
Architecturally, the first generation of modernist attempts to build nationalised, urbanised and modernised Singapore shares the signifier of Ang Mo and its signified antinomic exoticness and elitism. Amongst existing and representative built cases, the People's Park Complex (Figure 1) designed by William Lim can be regarded as an example.
As a high-rise commercial and residential building next to the Chinatown MRT station, the People's Park Complex was a built project undertaken by the newly formed Urban Renewal Department of the Housing and Development Board's (HDB) Sale of Sites programme. Similarly reputable, the People's Park Complex also was the first shopping centre of its kind in Southeast Asia, not to mention the milestone of being a model for later retail developments in Singapore. The People's Park Complex was the first identifiable project by Lim since he founded the firm Design Partnership (also known as DP Architects) in 1967 with Tay Kheng Soon and Koh Seow Chuan. Apart from being as a landmark building in terms of its functionality, as well as the architectural significance in local built trajectories and to the state's infrastructure policy implementation, this building also provides a clear sense that its symbolic display in Singapore after independence showcased the adaptive transplantation of modernism -an exotic form of Western modernitywhether it is examined in the past or the present. Verifying the connection with modernism, the People's Park Complex's displayed form and registered design concept were criticised by Jane Beamish and Jane Ferguson for pandering to Le Corbusier's ideal of high-rise living, as expressed in his Marseilles Unité d'Habitation (Beamish and Ferguson 1985). From a different aspect, the building was also declared to be a form of reifying metabolism by Fumihiko Maki (Lim 1990;Powell 2004), and showcased evidence of an Asian modernity through a metabolist theorisation (Koolhaas et al. 1995). Frequently linked, these architectural proponents also share a preoccupation with the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), Team 10, and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
From a current perspective, the People's Park Complex has a historical significance that is widely associated with the founding of Singapore in 1819 (Seng 2013). This built object can be regarded as an example of state governmentality implemented spatially. When the People's Park Complex was committed to Lim and his partners, the new government of Singapore together with the developer Ho Kok Cheong initiated a systematic process of introducing public spaces from a privately owned, domestic setting. The building was a project of urban design based on market principles, co-financed, planned and managed by the state; the architects provided the modern work-life container to reify this sense of governmentality. The building itself hence has been showcased as a simulacrum of the city, a miniaturisation of the state apparatus (Seng 2013). That is to say, the manifestation of this building suggests the exotic and Eurocentric notion of modernity to be synonymous with Singapore's nation-building, which was particularly the case during the initial decades after independence.
The success of the project realised and triggered a mixed-used formula proposed through government intervention for commercial projects in order to provide at least three floors of residential space, which makes the People's Park Complex the urban prototype for housing Singaporeans today. This is the main reason why, when built objects that comprise the generation of structures that include the People's Park Complex -such as the Golden Mile Complex, the former National Theatre and the Pearl Bank Apartments -do not appropriately fit into contemporary urban and daily functionality, this particular building still attracts loud voices for conservation, not only in terms of its historical and architectural value but also its social value. It is my argument that these perceptions of value are rooted in the production of the Ang Mo and elitism discourse. Historically, the People's Park Complex represents the national agenda at the founding stage of the country in built form. Architecturally, it represents a pivotal precedent in modernist internationalisation, a movement that flourished from the 1950s to the 1970s. William Lim of Design Partnership in particular displayed architectural mastery in giving the project a clarity of form through the conspicuous division of three functionalities -shops, offices and apartmentswhich marked the building as having a vital place in Singapore history in terms of the country's progressive vision translated into physical form by a pioneer architect. Educated in "Western" architectural schools that celebrated modernist movements, Lim played an important role in discourse on Singapore's architecture, urbanism, and even cultural identity construction during the initial decades after independence, especially in terms of being a think tank on contouring the built environment when consulted by the government. Socially, the introduction of the mixed-used functionality can be regarded as a foundation of Singapore's urban lifestyle today, and upon examination the completion of the People's Park Complex and use cannot go unmentioned in this context. In summary, whether in terms of historical, architectural or social value, the Ang Mo imagery is clearly a fundamental indicator when observing this built example.
The Ang Mo imagery arguably is a form of the reified signifier of the elitism that has been implemented in Singapore. That is to say, elitism as a representation of the Orientalist discourse produced by the state apparatus has successfully become a benchmark for measuring social status. In the everyday urbanism of Singapore today, the strategy of attracting the general public to visit a commercial fair can be evidence for such a phenomenon (Figure 2).
For example, in a 2014 cosmetics fair observed in the Orchard Road upscale shopping area in Singapore, Western architecture was used not only to highlight the value of the items sold within a temporary tent, but also to attract consumers. I argue that this is also a spatial representation of the Ang Mo imagery. The venue of the cosmetics fair is a designated atrium that had been vacated in a department store in order to function as temporary site for commercial fairs that are frequently organised. The atmosphere of the venue thus suggests neutral and functional settings comprised of wide-open spaces primarily for consumer circulation. The use of the classical language of Western architecture in the heart of an iconic Asian city-state conspicuously implies a sense of "displayness" which is an intentional ideology reified through visual forms and, most importantly, these forms are indicative not of being Asian nor Singaporean but being exotic, particularly, being European. First, although the tent suggests temporality, the white colour of the tent which contrasts with the visual presentation of the surroundings gives the tent a sense of sublime centrality and timelessness. This sense successfully counterbalances the temporality of the tent's material with a mental weight and immutability. This weight and immutability are consolidated by directly linking to not only the classic stone patterns of architecture that are rarely seen in native Asian examples, but also to a spiritual value of modernism that Le Corbusier claimed to be a manifestation of high morality and the sign of a great people (Le Corbusier 1987). Second, the classical architectural components such as the pediments, keystones, arches and mansard roof translate the sign-exchange value of how the Ang Mo imagery has been appreciated in contemporary Singapore society. This ideological appreciation is further associated with the items sold within the tent; the fetishism of high-price, branded cosmetics is therefore legitimised as a mark of high social status in Singapore. Once again, this display in the built environment came from the production of discourse. The belief system of centralising elitism in Singapore society has been reified in the built environment as a witness to its Orientalist effects.

Ah Beng and shallow nativism
The opposite of Ang Mo imagery, Ah Beng is a term used to describe ethnic Chinese youths in Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore and Malaysia, who have a rather loud, and/or some would say, terrible sense of fashion. The female equivalent of an Ah Beng is an Ah Lian. Although a stereotype, Ah Beng refers to someone who is not highly educated, who is loud and unsophisticated, and associates with street gangs; the term also indicates a strong sense of nativeness.
In Orientalism, Edward Said indicates that one core issue of modernity comes from the epistemological foundations of science. Through a scientific "legitimisation" of placing the Orient within an academic context, the once mysterious formation of heterogeneous culture has been reshaped as an objective element of scientific knowledge that participates in a colonial relationship of power and domination. The Orient, which has been subordinated into the inferior category of the colonial hierarchy, along with Oriental society and culture, is identified with the commencement of the Western colonisation of the non-West. This forms the official intellectual genealogy of Orientalism (Said 1979). For Said, Western colonialism employed a relationship of domination onto the Orientals who had been unwillingly labelled as the subalterns of the Western world, and this relationship was already considered not humanistic to the "superior" Western people of the colonial hierarchy. In Singapore today, based on a self-colonisation that upholds elitism represented by the Ang Mo imagery, Ah Beng on the other hand becomes an indicator of inferior natives, with stigma attached.
Said also argued that Orientalism becomes scarcely recognisable when it interrelates with contemporary phenomena such as globalisation, as the original attachment to colonialism has been removed from the global atmosphere since the end of World War II. However, Orientalism was not dismissed, as "the new Orientalist took over the attitudes of cultural hostility and kept them . . . conceptually emasculated, reduced to 'attitudes', 'trends', statistics: in short, dehumanised" (Said 1979). That is to say, the phenomenon of globalisation does not suggest a movement towards neutrality but forms a conspiracy with the nationalist phenomenon of localisation to produce a new discourse of Orientalism. Moreover, even though the formation is new, this discursive production of Orientalism still suggests tolerance for heterogeneity as a limitation of the so-called postmodern society that calls for multiculturalism. In this sense, the "tradition" of Orientalism is inherited in the current context, and has been articulated with the consciousness of modernisation and development in order to continue to intervene in the political economy of certain geopolitical areas. The discursive description of antiglobalisation can be regarded as equivalent to the Orientalist discourse. In this sense, Ah Beng which is widely associated with undereducation and grassroots has become a form of shallow nativism that supports the other end of the Orientalist spectrum in Singapore today.
Edward Said believes that the legacy of Orientalism has led to a dogmatic and authoritarian sense of consciousness such that many formerly colonised and former colonies placed themselves into a relationship of neo-imperialism after liberation (Said 1994). When this situation occurs, the role of the dominator in the colonisation no longer is the West or Westerners, but rather the native -yet privileged -elites. These native elites still produce a dogmatic and authoritarian sense of consciousness, not in a form of external imposition but local and nationalist collectivity, to oversee the cultural discourse. In this sense, Said's notion of Orientalism suggests a bidirectional meaning -in one way, it underscores the cultural hegemony of the Western centralism that leads to various versions of "canons" that permit localism and anti-colonial nationalism, and in the opposite way, it stimulates and prepares a counter-discourse against these forms of domination by exhibiting the experience of exile and recognising hybridity. In the built environment of contemporary Singapore, this bidirectional meaning can be seen from the homology of certain "Singaporean" styled places which are culturally characterised as being Ah Beng. The everyday public dining space commonly seen in Singapore is one example (Figure 3).
In Singapore, hawker culture was successfully inscribed as the country's first element on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 16 December 2020 (National Heritage Board 2021); the spatial manifestation of this listed cultural element of "being Singapore" is the socalled hawkers' space, which is differentiated from the normal definition of a hawker as something moveable and unsettled. Depending on the variables of management, ownership or locale, hawkers' spaces can further be sorted into private-owned restaurants, the Kopi Tiam (coffeeshop), the hawker centres and the food courts. In terms of the spatial organisation, a privately owned restaurant in this category usually suggests a locality that is characteristic of a semi-open sheltered space; a Kopi Tiam usually comprises multiple hawkers that are also settled in a semi-open sheltered space; a hawker centre generally is similar to the setting of a Kopi Tiam but on a bigger scale; and a food court usually is an enclosed air-conditioned space. No matter which type, a shared characteristic of such spaces which are now titled native is the free-range, sheltered dining setting. This setting is based on the flexibility and extendibility of the table and seats as well as the distance in between them, and this characteristic is rooted in the original feature of a hawker's business territory that is centred around a selling/cooking booth with sets of tables and stools on the street.
In other words, the hawkers' spaces, now commonly seen in nearly all residential blocks, retail blocks and shopping centres in Singapore, can be considered upgraded versions of the very local spaces that were originally unsettled and temporary. This settlement is enhanced by installation in a fixed location with a shelter and a sense of modernity, both functionally and atmospherically. That is to say, compared to traditional hawkers, the hawkers' space is considered modern, with better control of public hygiene and amenities, and even a well-managed business strategy. Of course, this sense of modernity was imposed by the government. The hawker centres are managed by the Hawker Centres Group (HCG) of the National Environment Agency (NEA), and the management of tenancies, licences and public health aspects are strictly regulated (National Environment Agency 2021). To some extent, this represents the "canons" for how this "local and native" space, or even a sense of nationality, is defined. On the other hand, since this modernised space is defined as being local and native, it is widely believed to be and treated as not only quotidian, but also a mediocre place for dining. Nothing sold in the hawkers' space is costly; some of the hawkers have received public comments about good quality, but these are never considered highclass meals. In other words, hawkers' spaces in Singapore today are not generally believed to be decent places for proper food, and the general public impression and assumption about the user group in such spaces is always associated with a casual status. I argue that a space that represents the Ah Beng status spatially realises the Orientalist construction of nativism, but in a narrow sense only. This nativism is narrow because it is loosely defined, and a good variety of food choices not limited to any geopolitical or cultural-political realm is usually found in such spaces. This variety, however, is subject to the government's absolute intervention which, of course, does not imply cultural diversity as being the essence of nativeness of Singapore but rather subordination by a central ideology created through state manipulation of power/ knowledge. This sense of nativism is also reflected architecturally in the unique residential built environment in Singapore, where over 80% of Singapore's resident population lives in public housing (Housing & Development Board 2021). HDB is the abbreviation for the Housing & Development Board, which is Singapore's public housing authority, whilst the term HDB is commonly used by the general public to refer to Singapore's public housing. As HDB alludes to Singapore's public housing, it has a registered ideology and formative configuration. Ideologically, in the way it functions in Singapore, HDB is the housing of "combination" (in Han characters 組屋), designed as a topdown apparatus to put together ethnic groups, cultures, and different religious beliefs or social classes in a context of harmony. The units in HDB housing are sized from the one-room to the five-room type, and nowadays most residents live in units that have more than three rooms. Unless it is a mega-scale HDB, usually there are no balconies attached to the units and hence the residents usually utilise the spaces outside the units' windows. For instance, it is very common to see HDB residents hanging bamboo sticks outside their windows to dry clothing, and this phenomenon does not exclude personal items such as knickers or underwear. The HDB thus, in terms of its characteristic quantity and formalistic quality, comprises the majority of the visual impressions of Singapore today. To some extent, the HDB is also evidence of Lee Kuan Yew's use of public housing as a political apparatus, as he believed that if all Singaporeans have their own homes, they would feel better settled under whatsoever the state imposes on them; it can be argued that the strategy is indeed successful.
The HDB thus stands for a very Singaporean version of public housing. Architecturally, however, this "nativeness" is distinguished by a well-managed space as well as its claimed flexible instrumentality. On the one hand, the spatial organisation of the HDB, as a representation of Lee's political intention, is adopted from modern public housing from the West that is suggestive of current examples seen in most European welfare states. That is to say, the essence of building HDB housing is to provide fair and sufficient units that all citizenry can possess, regardless of social class, ethnic background, cultural roots and religious beliefs. Consequently, the strategy of characterising the built object not only as modernist but also as neutral has been used to create geopolitical uniqueness. Just like the status of Singlish, the HDB space is nothing but practical. The living quality of HDB housing is definitely above normal low-income and mixedrace housing that can be seen in other countries, whilst it is also never comparable to commercial properties. It is my argument that the HDB reifies the quantity and quality that Lee believed all Singaporeans should have in their daily lives and native foundation, yet this sense of everydayness and nativeness is only functional. Like what Singlish exhibits, aesthetics and autonomy are also elements of absence when one examines the HDB as one object of Singaporean architecture.
On the other hand, since the goal of the HDB is to be the housing of "combination", the object not only is regarded as native but also as adaptive. The strategy of being neutral hence has a different layer of meaning and intention -to provide a multifunctional and flexible space that people of all sorts of backgrounds can use in different scenarios. Somehow, this implementation of neutrality seems to identify a counter-discourse against the essence of HDB which is rooted as a topdown and policy-driven practice of power/knowledge domination. This form of discourse seems to justify the HDB as a real form of native and local characterisation of Singapore. But this justification once again, I contend, is treated as a subaltern. First, the neutral and modular organisation of space in HDB housing is insufficient and not fully functional to accommodate the multiplicity of cultures, ethnicities and religions; the use of such spaces for specific activities hence can only be compromised. Second, the so-called flexibility of use actually is subject to government regulation; that is to say, the use of such space is never freely chosen and is always monitored. It is my argument that, from an analytical view of HDB housing as a representation of Orientalism, it is similar to what Ah Beng suggests in Singapore society today -it is native, yet it is native by stigmatising the dynamics of being architectural, as the local and cultural-political senses are neutralised.

Rojak and a diluted atmosphere of orientalism
Rojak is the Malay word for "mixture". As its physical representation, the term can refer to either a salad dish of Javanese origin composed of a mixture of sliced fruit and vegetables served with a spicy palm sugar dressing, or a meaning of mixing, whether in terms of races, cultural forms or simply just ingredients. The latter usage is common slang to indicate things or people that are not "pure" in essence. As a signifier, Rojak can signify a discriminative connotation of a bastard or a postcolonial sense of a hybrid.
In Singapore, the culture of management is rather mature. This means that, for most Singaporeans, things will eventually be solved by the government because the government has managed to "solve" everything. In addition, most Singaporeans believe that it not worth bothering to ask why the government decides to do a thing, as the concern only brings troubles to them. As a consequence, the government of Singapore always provides guidelines to its people, and the people in Singapore also always do things according to guidelines. This phenomenon not only produces the Rojak culture in the everyday life beyond Singapore's multicultural, multi-religious and multi-ethnic nature, but also makes this culture register a dilute atmosphere of Orientalism.
Edward Said confessed that Orientalism is less preferred by specialists today, compared to Oriental studies that focus on the ancient antiquity and area studies, both because Orientalism is vague and general and because it connotes the high-handed executive attitude of nineteenth-century and early-twentiethcentury European colonialism. However, he also implied that, especially with regard to the emergent discipline of area studies, the spatiotemporal scope of Orientalism has been adjusted into a new scale. This implication was marked by the timing of area studies' rise around the termination of World War II that marked the end of European and classical imperialism and the commencement of a global neo-imperialism centred around the United States (Said 1979). This argument first addressed a decentralisation of the traditional dichotomy between the West (Europe) and the Orient (non-West) into a more complicated network that divides the world into different geopolitical areas having similar language, culture and politicaleconomic interests. Said believed that the categories of the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Africa and Latin America in the context of area studies reflected not only the fact of Orientalism methodologically becoming less literary, but also separating this notion from its historical burden. That is to say, the relationship of domination manipulated by Orientalism is deepened, but without the original limitation of being placed within the academic categorythe influence of Orientalism hence transcends the context of literature and classical canons so that pragmatism and heterogeneity can be included. The nature of Orientalism becomes diluted particularly in a context in which power/knowledge formation is engaged with globalisation. For Singapore, a city-state strongly dependent upon the open-market economy, the penetration of Orientalism is worth unfolding carefully.
To observe this dilute atmosphere of Orientalism in Singapore, public education policies and the people's cultivated reliance upon these policies can shed some light on the matter. The Singaporean government has ceaselessly announced different sorts of public education policies implemented by a good number of national campaigns. The national campaigns can be regarded as covering all aspects of everyday life, from the Speak Mandarin Campaign to the Courtesy Campaign, and from the Eat Frozen Pork campaign to the Anti-Spitting Campaign. As a consequence of such top-down and collective ideological imposition, Singaporeans are used to waiting for and following this guidance, which implies the impurity and sophistication of the everyday representations, as everything is subject to intervention through different intentions. The logic behind the nature of Rojak culture is not simply based on the fact of this city-state's multiculturalism and multiethnicity but more on the physical consequences of disobeying or ignoring such impositions. This form of Orientalism imposed by the government's public education is attached to related sanctions that prevent the possibility of inefficiency or, in a different way, that reify the discourse constructed by the government. The nature of Rojak culture has impacted daily urbanism, as people gradually tend to believe that the responsibility of taking action belongs to the authorities and hence civil consciousness also gradually becomes vulnerable.
Architecturally, this contradiction between possessing both reliance upon and vulnerability from something can be analogous to contemporary manifestations of the built environment in Singapore, whether in the scale of a built object or an urban design project. Though seemingly normal, some cases suggest this Singaporean Orientalism that references a sense of hybridisation. For example, the Bishan Public Library, completed in 2006 and designed by the local architect Look Boon Gee, is one example for which an ideological reference plays a notable role in manifesting the built form, even though the designer never directly links the design concept to such a referent. Although Look in his official profile admitted that many of his works are modernist (LOOK Architects 2021a), the firm led by him also claims to be unique and innovative in design: "their search for new building techniques in synthesizing original yet sustainable design and their sensibility in drawing inspiration from local culture, traditions and in vernacular designs pertinent to local context and the natural environment" (LOOK Architects 2021b). In the case of the Bishan Public Library, this Rojak character is also registered -although the official announcement centres around an innovative concept of transforming a tropical tree house into a contemporary building (LOOK Architects 2021c), the built form of the project is obviously associated with a Corbusian reference ( Figure 4). Obvious yet never mentioned in the designer's discourse, the entrance hall of the Bishan Public Library strongly links the built form to the chapel of the Notre-Dame du Haut in France, designed by Le Corbusier. I argue that, psychologically, this mix with a forceful reference to the cultural-political atmosphere of the Rojak character in Singapore society today has been consolidated by some local architects who attempt to display a sense of native subjectivity, even though some of them never mention that this form of native subjectivity is built upon an essential and considerable foundation of external intervention. A certain number of noted architects such as Look himself and another "Corbusian" architect, Chan Soo Khian, both of whom have been mentioned as part of a new generation of local designers producing innovative and geopolitical architectural design, suggest the dilute atmosphere of Orientalism in contemporary Singaporean architecture.
This dilute atmosphere of Orientalism implied by Singapore's Rojak character is also noticeable, or perhaps more conspicuous, from the observation of the city-state's urban design manifestations. One example is the Gardens by the Bay in the Central Region of Singapore, which is now is a landmark characterised as a nature park. As part of the nation's plans to transform a master plan of a "Garden City" (HistorySG 1967), which references the Western perspective of urban planning, to a "City in a Garden" with the aim of enhancing greenery and flora to create a model tropical city in Southeast Asia, the Gardens by the Bay has become a milestone project. First announced at Singapore's 2005 National Day Rally by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the Gardens by the Bay was intended to be Singapore's leading urban outdoor recreation space and a national icon. In other words, this project is treated as a representation of Singapore's nationbuilding in the built environment as well as the reification of the state's governmentality. In connection with this displayed imagery, Singapore has been ranked in recent years as the "greenest" city amongst Asian countries, according to the Green City Index research done worldwide (Economist Intelligence Unit 2012), enhancing her reputation in a global context. This iconic and representative urban design project, however, achieves critical notice due to its tactical application of Orientalism through architecture, even though this is barely mentioned and perceived by the general public and in academic circles.
The Gardens by the Bay was designed by Grant Associates, an intercontinental design firm concentrating on landscape architecture and sustainable development. This firm was founded by British landscape architect Andrew Grant in 1997 and now has offices in the United Kingdom and Singapore. The Gardens by the Bay project helped the firm to be recognized by winning the World Building of the Year prize in 2012. Interestingly, from an architectural point of view the most visual, iconic and attractive element in this "green and sustainable" project is not the natural greenery conserved and showcased, but its "imagery", which is architectural and artificial. As stated by the firm in the announcements of the project: "18 distinctive Supertrees and 2 cooled Conservatories provide futuristic landmarks and have been instrumental in shaping Singapore's identity as a 'City in a Garden'" (Grant Associates 2021). The so-called "Supertrees" (Figure 5) are the 18 treelike built structures that overshadow the Garden's landscape with their height.
In the end, Singapore's most iconic and representative "national natural park" is referenced through unnatural intervention. It is my contention that this not only embodies the Rojak phenomenon which transcends its narrow definition of being neutrally mixed, but also implies the diluted sense of Orientalism which is still influential in both physical and social environments in contemporary Singapore.

The essence of Asian Architectural orientalism
The above case studies of Singaporean built objects in terms of their identity constructions are analysed as consequences of Orientalism's impact and suggest seemingly internal contradictions. These contradictions lie in the use of international modernism which is seen as an expression of the local built form. However, I contend that built elements and characterisations in contemporary Singapore which have been introduced externally, particularly from the Westcentric built world, can be traced in and are acknowledged as part of local elements as representations of a postcolonial attitude. Therefore, the authentic "local" built elements (if any can be recognised as such in the contemporary Singaporean built environment) interestingly are displayed as the neo-colonial machinery, subordinated to the acceptance of external built forms as local.
In the introduction to his influential book, Said underscores the elemental impact of Orientalism: "it would be wrong to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea, or a creation with no corresponding reality . . . a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as 'the Orient'" (Said 1979). In other words, Said argues that discourse of Orientalism is never inert and in many cases its influence can even transcend reality. Architecturally, Homi Bhabha's notion of mimicry, which he argues is a form of resistance to colonialism (Bhabha 1994), can be borrowed to help understand contemporary Singaporean built cases from an Orientalist perspective. That is to say, a noticeable postcolonial attitude of absorbing colonial modernity as a form of building self-confidence and as a trigger for subjectivation by local architects explains the seeming contradictions raised by the use of modernism as the local built form. In this way, Orientalism suggests the possibility of being "inverted" (Anderson 1990) to reflect the displacement or the subordination of Singaporean "built authenticity". The phenomenon of "inverted Orientalism" mutates the discourse of Asian architectural Orientalism into a unique ideological construction. Ackbar Abbas's observation of Hong Kong architecture witnesses this intrinsic essence of Orientalism. Abbas proposes three main types of architecture in Hong Kong which further helps unfold the problematic internal contradiction that might cause doubts about the case studies described in this paper. Abbas argues that Hong Kong architecture today can be identified first by the so-called Merely Local, second by the Placeless International and third by the Anonymous (Abbas 1997). The Merely Local refers to those historic buildings that are now rather meaningless to the younger generations of Hong Kong people apart from their "historical" look, as these generations live almost entirely independent of those buildings' original context. The Placeless International refers to those built objects that share familiarity with landmark buildings in global urban places, and the Anonymous alludes to the majority, seemingly indistinguishable everyday built objects that represent the hyperdensity of Hong Kong. In other words, due to the inevitable intervention from outside the Asian built context, the "local" forms of the Asian built environment are at times suggestive of exteriority.
Jiat-Hwee Chang's examination of tropical architecture in South and Southeast Asia perhaps is more indicative of this concern with the use of modernism as an expression of the local built form in Singapore. As Chang argues, neo-colonial power/knowledge regarding modern tropical architecture was appropriated by postcolonial subjects whose technical expertise could be acquired and infused with socio-cultural meanings and re-politicised (Chang 2012). Chang indicates that this is particularly true in Singapore and Malaysia as they are not impoverished by neo-colonial capitalist development but instead enjoy rapid economic growth; such a situation shapes the understanding of their architectural manifestation in a different way from the conventional perception of architecture. Singapore and Malaysia are not unique cases in contemporary Asia; Chang argues that the production of neo-traditional architecture in different parts of the developing Asian countries that have been intimately connected with social, cultural and political elitism, such as Geoffrey Bawa's influence on Sri Lankan architecture, often suggests the same consequences. Given that the return of tradition is often attributed to the failure of modernisation and development to free the developing world from backwardness, elitism in architecture through the adoption of the colonial gaze is paradoxical, but resonates with conspiracy on the coloniser's side. In Singapore, those Ang Mo and Rojak architects, whether or not they are local, speak for the elitism ideologically imposed by Lee Kuan Yew since independence.

Conclusion: Singaporean architecture in a contemporary Asian mode
This paper starts from a linguistic perspective and from a theoretical angle on Orientalism to revisit architectural manifestations as forms of postcoloniality in contemporary Singapore. My attempt here is an alternative observation that neither adopts dualistic judgements nor challenges existing discourse, but concentrates on contemporary Asian mode. A postcolonial perspective avoids dualism and total rejection, and it explores the dynamics of the Other and its subjectivation; both strategies aim to seek ways out of the unbalanced and inappropriate discourse caused by such scenarios. Asia, most particularly Asia's urban built context that has long been subordinated and dominated by Western epistemology, can be regarded as one outcome of such discourse. This paper argues that the urban built environment and the cultural politics that conspicuously influence architectural manifestations and urbanism in Singapore can benefit from a re-examination under a postcolonial context of Orientalism. From an observation of urbanism that implies the reification of Singapore's dominant cultural politics, the city-state's architectural manifestations can be alternatively read in a way that avoids seemingly objective but arbitrary conclusions. Singaporean architecture's placelessness and internationalisation thus deserves an analytical deconstruction.
The discursive construction of Orientalism can be seen both in Singapore's urbanism and its architecture. In terms of people's daily life that is contextualised within a mature urbanised city-state, the quasiauthoritarian management of the state continued since Lee Kuan Yew's governance has created a sense of heterotopia that coexists with the actual practice of democracy, and this formally displays the signified and the signifier in Singaporean society today. "Trained" and "educated" by this ideological image of culturalpolitical participation, today's Singaporeans exercise democracy in a uniquely Singaporean way: criticism is a bottom-up, small-group action that takes place mostly in private or semi-public domains such as in taxis and coffee shops, and the results of public elections as well as political campaigns are dominated by the top-down voices of the government, or, more accurately, the PAP (People's Action Party). Even today, when the PAP's management of Singapore has been increasingly critically examined, most Singaporean citizens still vote PAP, reflecting the absolute trust in the state regardless of understanding how it runs. This imposed discourse that somehow replaces or empties Singaporeans' subjectivity and sense of autonomy has been satirised by native film director Chee Keong Neo in the movie Just Follow Law (2007). The opening scene shows a father and daughter arguing about whether to cross the road when the traffic light is red but there is no vehicle on the street. This lays the foundation for the debate -should we just follow the rules? -and interestingly, the positive side that shapes most Singaporeans' actions evidences how Orientalism magically turns a discursive construction into reality. That is to say, in today's Singapore and for most Singaporeans today, what has been collectively imposed and advertised transcends absolutely what can be physically seen and immediately acted on in the hierarchy of decision making. This debate that continuously ferments in contemporary Singaporean society as an impact of Orientalism has been reaffirmed in Neo's new film, The Diam Diam Era (2020). The movie highlights how major policy changes and the political climate since the 1980s have caused great changes in Singaporeans' lives and environment. The final remark in the film that questions once again whether Singaporeans should speak up or keep silent about their experiences still registers as a core of Singaporeans' daily lives, and validates the existence of the Orientalist dichotomy as argued by Said in contemporary Asia.
Architecturally, this sense of Orientalism can be detected from parallels between the built environment and society's cultural politics. Here, three slang terms shed light on Singapore's architectural Orientalism: First, the Ang Mo imagery suggests the discursive superiorisation of elitism. Second, the Ah Beng status locates the shallow position of nativism. Finally, Singapore's Rojak character reminds us that the atmosphere of domination has been diluted and hence not perceived architecturally with immediacy. In addition to the cases analysed above, these three indicators of Orientalism's impact on contemporary Singaporean architecture are reflected in some recent landmark objects that are strongly associated with Singapore. The recently completed Jewel Changi Airport complex is one vivid example ( Figure 6).
The Jewel Changi Airport complex is a commercial complex recently completed and opened in Singapore. The project was designed by Moshe Safdie, an Israeli architect who also designed most of the landmark objects that display contemporary Singapore's nationbuilding, such as the Marina Bay Sands and the ArtScience Museum. Within Changi Airport, the Jewel Changi Airport complex includes gardens, attractions, a hotel, more than 300 retail and dining outlets, as well as early luggage check-in facilities; it attracts not only travellers but also citizens who frequently consume in the complex. This built object hence can be regarded both as a representation of nation-building and a representation of quotidian places. I argue that traces of Orientalism are still registered in this project. First, notwithstanding the fact that the designer is not a native architect but has undertaken a considerable number of projects for nation-building, the employment of not only high technology for the built form but also a heterotopic atmosphere, where, for example, trains connecting airport terminals move through the interior gardens, echoes the Ang Mo imagery. Second, the native elements -the so-called tropicalityare carefully placed but subject to the Ang Mo imagery to shape the Ah Beng status. The tropical gardens and waterfalls, for instance, are displayed and merged with the functionality of the complex. These once outdoor and natural elements now are enhanced with air conditioning and shelter. That is to say, the amenities of an indoor atmosphere still dominate such native imagery. Last, even though the complex suggests an international, high-end and iconic position, it still strong references engagement with everyday happenings in Singapore. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) 5 launched plans for Singapore's decentralisation in 1991 in order to implement the government's aim to ease congestion, relieve pressure on infrastructure and bring work closer to home by spreading commercial activities around the state and investing in developing decentralised multi-use centres. Shopping centres, as the lowest element in this top-down policy, play an important role in identifying these sub-centres. The Changi Airport originally played the role of one such sub-centre in the East Region of Singapore, and the completion and openness of the Jewel Changi Airport complex doubtless sent a strong message that recommends greater use of the centre by the general public. This government intervention, whether an upgrade of traditional life or as political mobilisation to stimulate domestic consumption, is characteristic of the Rojak character.
Whether from the cases analysed in previous sections or from the integrated summary of the Jewel Changi Airport complex, my point is that contemporary Singaporean architecture reflects not only formalistic features of global trends but also regional as well as geostrategic cultural politics. The latter concern is never adequately addressed if the discussion always stays within a context of how tropicality can be associated with sustainability and technology, and the interplay between transculturation (of the "West") and subjectivation (of Asia) in Singapore and its implication for quotidian, collective and anonymous urbanism should be carefully considered. Edward Said, in his afterword for the 1995 edition of Orientalism, compares and contrasts thoughts of postcolonialism and postmodernism. In this afterword he emphasises: . . . post-modernism in one of its most famous programmatic statements (by Jean-Francis Lyotard) stresses the disappearance of the grand narratives of emancipation and enlightenment, the emphasis behind much of the work done by the first generation of postcolonial artists and scholars is exactly the opposite: the grand narratives remain, even though their implementation and realisation are at present in abeyance, deferred, or circumvented. (Said 1995a) Postcolonialism that nowadays stands for discourse against primarily Western colonial forces cannot parallel postmodernism that represents the experience of the West. The prefix "post" added to these two terms "suggests not so much the sense of going beyond but rather . . . on the new modes and forms of the old practices" (Said 1995a). In other words, histories of the West and of the "non-West" are by no means parallel but intertwined (Said 1994). Generally speaking, the former colonies take the position of either learning from the former colonisers (the West) or the other way round (nativism) as a prototype for the official cultural policy or ideology. Some might take parts from each, but in terms of emphasising a sense of nationalism and national identity, most employ native tradition as a base for constructing the value system of native but official governmentality. This intention, as argued by Said, is in fact also a representation of Orientalism that is no different than the colonial sense of viewing the world and history through centralism. This just mimics the cultural hegemony that was invented by the Western colonisers, as the notion of the so-called nation-state resulting from the Western colonial governmentality does not fit the native history, society and cultural conditions of these former colonies. Most importantly, this mimicry through Orientalism would lead to the further domination of neo-imperialism over the political economy and cultural production, as well as regional chaos and conflicts (Said 1994).
In conclusion, the phenomenon of "Orientalising the Orient" (Said 1979) perhaps reflects the problematic of identity self-confusion, raised by those who are native and intellectual but rely on the representation of Orientalism as a platform of conceiving their mother culture, and this perhaps is also an alternative view for not only Singapore but other Asian countries to better consolidate their understanding of architecture and urbanity that is contextualised with the intrinsic essence of Asia. Only through careful moderation and mediation of the mindset that locates the epistemology which accurately addresses an Asian built context, the theorisations and pragmatism can provide concrete, useful and positive references, whether in terms of reflecting the postcoloniality of contemporary Asia or moving towards a spontaneous and autonomous development of Asian architecture and urbanism.

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Notes on contributor
Dr Francis Chia-Hui Lin is an architectural historian, theoretician and curator. He is currently an assistant professor at National Taiwan University. His areas of expertise lie in the critical discourse on architecture and urbanism within a wider framework of history and theory. Amongst his interests, a particular focus is examining the immediate historicity of postcoloniality in the Asia Pacific region that is resulted from the inescapable marriage with the prevailing Western epistemology. He publishes and reviews academic works in cross-national and transdisciplinary communities. His books include Heteroglossic Asia (2015), Architectural Theorisations and Phenomena in Asia (2017) and The Postcolonial Condition of Architecture in Asia (2022). In 2019, Francis was awarded the Ta-You Wu Memorial Award-the outstanding research award for young researchers in Taiwan.