The Chee Guan Chiang House at 25 Grange Rd in Singapore occupies land worth millions yet stubborn owners and protective authorities ensure it remains abandoned.

Home On The Grange

The so-called Chee Guan Chiang House at 25 Grange Rd (corner of Grange and Devonshire) in central Singapore dates back to the late 1930s. It was commissioned by the eponymous Chee Guan Chiang, the first son of Malacca-based banking tycoon Chee Swee Cheng.

Rich Man, Singapore Man

After demolishing an earlier home occupying the plot, the younger Chee hired well-known Singapore architect Ho Kwong Yew to build him a distinctive mansion in the then-current Art Deco style. Ho, recognized today as a leader of the “Modern Movement” in Singapore, incorporated earlier architectural flourishes such as a Roaring Twenties-style grand staircase into the home’s otherwise cutting-edge design.

Leonie Toons

The home was completed in 1938 but Chee Guan Chiang didn’t stay there long – following the end of WW2, the building was renamed the Leonie House and catered to mainly foreign boarders and tourists. New management took over the business in 1964, changing the name to the New Leonie Guest House.

The Other WH

If this isn’t confusing enough, in October of 2013 Yvonne Lee-Khoo (a grand-daughter of Chee Guan Chiang) posted an article at the Singapore URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority) online forum. Ms Lee-Khoo explained that the house was originally named “Wellington House”: the word “well” meaning “good” and sounding like “wealthy”. To this day, wrought iron balustrades both inside and outside of the house prominently feature the “WH” motif.

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Grange Grunge Abandoned Art Deco Mansion In Singapore

Based in Singapore, Wallflower Architecture + Design creates ultimate tropical dream homes for a steamy rainforest climate, each one laid out for optimal air flow, natural cooling and views of the lush vegetation and blue skies outside. Founded in 1999 by Tan Chai Chong Robin and Cecil Chee, the firm “believes that beauty and cleverness are inseparable in excellent design, the value of which enhances the environment in which we work and live and ultimately, enriches the human experience and spirit.”

This philosophy is evident in every one of their private residential projects, many of which center upon a crystalline water feature. Bold, distinctly Singaporean and undeniably luxurious, these homes are like the summer getaway houses the rest of us can only dream of.

The Secret Garden House, Wallflower’s most recent residential project, exemplifies the firm’s aesthetics and ethos. Set in an affluent bungalow area known as Bukit Timah, the home is located on uneven terrain with narrow street frontage, and it’s surrounded by neighbors on all sides. Wallflower envisioned a ‘secret garden’ to shield the 13,900-square-foot home from prying eyes, hiding most of the structure’s mass within the steep portion of the site. Though it seems to be just two levels from the street, the rest of it spills down the hillside to enjoy the views. One of its coolest features is an oculus gazing from the garage up into a reflecting pool in the yard.

Combining the convenience of urban living with tropical vibes, security and privacy, Forever House was a dream fulfilled for both the clients and the architects. Wallflower was given a ‘no expense to be spared’ mandate along with a wish list of features, like a 6-car garage and a 25-meter pool. The home has a striking angular appearance from the street, and it only gets more gorgeous from there, with a mature tree set into an island in the T-shaped pool and a glut of silver travertine and black basalt stone contrasting with gleaming wood inside.

With ‘Enclosed Open,’ Wallflower gave a family concerned with security a fully fenced ‘compound’ that looks nothing like you’d expect based on that description. Instead of feeling like a fortress, it’s airy and accessible, but spaces that are normally visible to neighbors – like pools and gardens – are shielded within a spacious courtyard.

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Mutant sea urchins seem to have evolved into monstrous, buoyant creatures capable of rising above the surface of the sea, glowing softly against the skyline in Singapore. Made from crocheted lace, these three oversized urchin installations by Choi + Shine invite passersby to pause within them and take in the city through their patterned shells.

Created for this year’s i Light Marina Bay Festival, which focuses on sustainability, The Urchins are hand-crafted and interactive, each one hanging high enough to dwarf even the tallest visitors. Made from UV- and weather-resistant polyester cord stretched on an aluminum frame, the urchins hang from ultra thin cables.

“At night, the mysteriously hovering and glowing large Urchins create a sense of magic as if time has stopped,” says Choi + Shine. “When viewers enter into the Urchins, they will be surrounded by a single layer of glowing, lacy surface, where they can enjoy the detail and texture of the Urchins and see the city, water and the sky through this visual filter.”

“When other viewers see the occupants in the Urchins, the occupants will glow within the lacy room, creating an illusion of ethereal levitation of the occupants, while the occupants become a part of the artwork.”

Instead of stretching upward toward increasingly polluted skies, could the solution to land scarcity issues in places like Singapore be found in subterranean development? Like something out of a dystopian film, this proposal by a student at Bartlett School of Architecture envisions a sort of mole city with inverted skyscrapers digging deep below street level, an extreme excavation of massive caverns and “a complex and continuously self expanding network of green canyons, tunnels, reservoirs and exploratory excavations into the granite rock below.”

If you look at the sci-fi we humans have been producing for the past half-century, many of us have already accepted a future in which living on the surface of the Earth is no longer viable, whether that means we will have to build vertical cities, float on the oceans or leave the planet altogether. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine that a combination of climate change, pollution, overdevelopment and overpopulation would push us into building underground wherever possible, as well. This proposal by Finbarr Fallon envisions Singapore starting to plan the project by the year 2020, celebrating the idea before ultimately tearing it down and highlighting its many flaws.

Fallon presents Singapore 2065 as a darkly cinematic short film, with an engineer from the Subterranean Development Institute explaining how and why the development came about. The film takes us on a tour of the ‘World’s Greatest Engineering Feat’ and its luxurious architecture, which is clearly targeted at the well-to-do. The presentation seems fairly straightforward, but watch it all the way to the end for an unexpected plot twist.

“The film follows a documentary created by the state led, Subterranean Development Institute which looks behind the scenes of the world’s largest construction project, from a highly corporate and nationalistic point of view,” says Fallon. “This concludes with spectacular scenes of celebration where the National Day Parade is reconfigured from traditional military use, to a choreographed march of robotic construction technology through the underground city.”

“The documentary however, is interrupted by a subversive protagonist (the author), who gains access to secretive parts of the network by discovering hidden cave networks. This acts as a counter point critique to the corporate led masterplan, forming a social commentary on the ethics of large scale infrastructural projects and the resulting consequences, such as the exploitation of foreign workers.”

An ambitious infrastructure conversion project in Singapore will turn 15 miles of a abandoned rail corridor into a continuous mixed-use trail-and-park system stretching from one end of the island city-state to the other.

Led by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and designed by Japanese firm Nikken Sekkei, the coast-to-coast master plan features over 100 access points and 20 modular platforms for various uses, strung together with contiguous bicycling and pedestrian paths.

Some spaces will be dedicated to nature-oriented activities, including secluded boardwalks and rainforest viewing stations. Other nodes will be community-oriented, with outdoor movie projectors, climbing walls, information stations, food vendors and additional activity centers.

The southern terminus will be the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, and the long route north will bring the trail system past a series of both remote and urban areas, under viaducts and over bridges, offering access to city dwellers but also escapes into nature and compelling views. In some cases, redundant infrastructure (like former train stations) will be incorporated into this rails-to-trails redevelopment plan.

The goal is to create “seamless public space” that prioritizes the “preservation and reintegration of existing green areas and a relaxed extension of modern life,” according to the designers. The rail corridor should be “inspiring, accessible, comfortable, memorable, eco-friendly and growing/evolving … acting as a catalyst to development and community bonding.”