The Performance of Measurement WHEN IS ENOUGH, ENOUGH?
The theme of Singapore Archifest 2024, in its 18th edition, continues the project that began with the Singapore Institute of Architect’s Singapore exhibition at the 18th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023. At its homecoming, the inverted title, “The Performance of Measurement – When is Enough, Enough?”, re-emphasises architecture’s raison d’etre, in evoking the Intangible in Architecture.
The Intangible is all pervasive in Architecture.
In the first instalment, we focused on Loveability and the Common Good. Buildings and the built environment are designed and built according to measurable and quantifiable standards. Yet a community’s interaction with their environment is intangible and not measured within these same markers. How should we celebrate work that empower and include, that recognise attachment to places and connections to form communities as desired outcomes and key ingredients to consider in design? How could we measure these unmeasurable intangible outcomes to unearth and acknowledge spaces and places that bring about Common Good?
“Great Buildings, in my opinion, begin with the unmeasurable, go through measurable means when it is being designed, and in the end must be unmeasurable.”
— Louis Kahn
As a next measure, ‘The Performance of Measurement’ lifts our focus to Singaporean architecture values. Alongside the multitude of measurable criteria imposed on architecture practice for common good, do we still hold space for measures of what makes great? At this SGAF24, awards, conferences and tours will be creating such a space and time. To celebrate work that empower and include, to recognise attachment to places and connections to form communities as desired outcomes and key ingredients to consider in design, to unearth and acknowledge spaces and places that manage to imbue people with a sense of awe and wonder – to lift the spirit.
Taken together, our hope for Singapore Archifest 2024 is for all of us with the privilege of affecting people’s everyday lives through the built and unbuilt environment, to realise once again, our role as cultural custodians, to enrich the soul of the cities we work in, and to materialise the intangible and the unmeasurable, one project at a time.
Can we like caterpillars as much as we like butterflies?
How can buildings act like a rainforest?
Can the final outcome be work-in-progress?
Can we eat our landscape?
Can we change the nature of a city?
