'When you've an opportunity to improve your life, grab it'
The Straits Times begins a new series today, The Pioneer Club, featuring Singaporean pioneers who made contributions in different fields. If you have ever wondered why the first HDB flats looked the way they did, or how Sentosa-as-resort-isle came into being, Alan Choe is the man responsible. The now 83-year-old was HDB's first architect-planner and founder of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. He recalls those trailblazing times, and how hardship during the war helped give him the drive to succeed at his task. But he tells Goh Chin Lian he worries that today's generation, who have not experienced hardship, lack his generation's derring-do.
The Straits Times, 12 Apr 2014
The Straits Times begins a new series today, The Pioneer Club, featuring Singaporean pioneers who made contributions in different fields. If you have ever wondered why the first HDB flats looked the way they did, or how Sentosa-as-resort-isle came into being, Alan Choe is the man responsible. The now 83-year-old was HDB's first architect-planner and founder of the Urban Redevelopment Authority. He recalls those trailblazing times, and how hardship during the war helped give him the drive to succeed at his task. But he tells Goh Chin Lian he worries that today's generation, who have not experienced hardship, lack his generation's derring-do.
The Straits Times, 12 Apr 2014
My father passed away when I was one. My mother, a seamstress, looked after four children.
When I was 12, the Japanese invaded. They looked to us as future recruits for their young army. (Fortunately) I worked at a coconut oil mill. Oil was an essential commodity.
When I was 13, I bought melon seeds to sell. One kati cost me less than $1.80. I could get almost double that.
The hard times taught me how to fight for survival, to take every opportunity, and to be resourceful and make the best of each situation.
What was it like to study architecture in Australia?
What was it like to study architecture in Australia?
My mother, sisters and brother chipped in to finance my studies. And when I was doing the A levels at Raffles Institution, I earned money giving tuition.
In my final year at the University of Melbourne, it offered town planning in the evening. I did two courses simultaneously.
I thought town planning would broaden my knowledge in architecture. When you've an opportunity to do something that will improve your life, you must grab it or lose it.
How did you join HDB later?
How did you join HDB later?
One of (former prime minister) Lee Kuan Yew's major political platforms was to eradicate poor housing. His plan was to build 50,000 units (in five years).
They formed the Housing and Development Board (HDB). The HDB had no planners. The expat architects half-finished Queenstown but packed up and left.
The HDB headhunted me and created a title, architect-planner. First thing they told me: "Finish Queenstown." One way to swell the numbers was to do a lot of one-room flats. No more than 300 sq ft. No partitioning. Communal toilets. Communal kitchen.
A lift was a luxury. Every fifth floor, you had a lift so that the tenants walked two floors down or two floors up.
We also could not afford casement windows. We used louvres, with a lock. You press it down, it locks, so people cannot break in. Many locked it and could not open it. They swore at the Government for giving them "defective" things.
On (compensation for) resettlement, Singaporeans were good at improvising. On Friday, they stocked up the building material. On Monday, you saw a brand-new house, but they stained it as though it had been there a long time: "That's a house. Pay compensation." Fruit trees, the same. Suddenly you found so many papaya, pineapple, banana trees.
You planned Toa Payoh town. Anything special about its design?
You planned Toa Payoh town. Anything special about its design?
We had to go for a simple, repetitive design. We used concrete hollow blocks. The blocks were 15 inches (38cm) long, bricks were nine inches (23cm). Because each piece was bigger, you put up your wall much faster.
Our first design was just to pack in the numbers. There was little (scope) to talk about architectural design. But we wanted to strive for something liveable and functional.
Why was there a need for urban renewal in the city centre?
Why was there a need for urban renewal in the city centre?
People who escaped the Japanese Occupation came back to the city centre where employment was. They crammed into two- and three-storey shophouses in Chinatown which were sub-divided into cubicles for eight times more families.
Urban renewal must have private participation. You can't clear everything for public housing. Good sites, you want to generate economic development.
How did you do urban renewal here?
How did you do urban renewal here?
Nobody could afford to buy large numbers of sites. As a result, there was no meaningful development. Cathay Building, Asia Insurance Building, 7th Storey Hotel and Southern Hotel were built long ago.
I said if I had the right to sell the land, I could finance it. The first site, People's Park Complex, I wanted for multi-purpose use: housing, shopping. I also wanted three hotels in Havelock Road. Singapore needed hotels for tourism.
I told the Government you must, in the first sale, give incentives to make sure they make money, so word would go around. Reduce property tax. Give easy repayment on land.
How did you avoid the criticism of cronyism, as in the US?
How did you avoid the criticism of cronyism, as in the US?
It was an open public tender. You must have a ministerial committee to oversee: When I make the recommendation to award (the tender), they must approve.
Those days, architectural practice depended on the architect or his parents knowing important people. Young architects never got a chance to rise.
We also looked into the quality of design. Highest land price might not win if the design was not acceptable.
If I had seven projects offered, at least 30 architects would be involved in design. That stimulated interest in architecture.
How about conservation?
How about conservation?
Halfway through urban renewal, learning from the Americans where they accused the authorities of sending in the bulldozer, I realised we should think about conservation.
I recognised Sultan Mosque, Bussorah Street had something to preserve. Likewise, Chinatown and Serangoon Road. I prepared the plans, hoping one day to put forward the case. One day (in 1967) I got a note from Lee Kuan Yew asking: "Have we thought about conservation?" I sent to him the folio I prepared.
He sent me a note telling me he was very happy to see somebody in his fold thinking ahead to preserve what little we had. Within that year, I had a gold medal (for Public Administration, a National Day award).
What were your challenges in planning Sentosa?
What were your challenges in planning Sentosa?
Dr (Albert) Winsemius, a United Nations expert invited to help restructure our economy, told me when I was general manager of the Urban Redevelopment Authority that the Government was awarding Sentosa to an oil company. He thought it was wrong to have another Bukom Island (refinery) next to Singapore.
The only thing I could think of was to turn it into a tourist island or green lung. I did a short paper. A week later, he called me up: "Good news, Alan. We won!"
I was asked to plan Sentosa. We were able to sell land for private development, which enabled us to generate a lot of income. We sold sites to Beaufort Hotel, Shangri-La Hotel, Asian Village and the equivalent of Big Splash.
I devised a scheme where they paid me a lump sum, which was a fraction of what the land was worth. In exchange, I took 20 per cent of gross takings as long as the project continued.
How do you feel as you look at the Singapore you planned?
How do you feel as you look at the Singapore you planned?
I planned Shenton Way so that the blocks were staggered and everybody had a share of the view of the sea. There was a continuous shopping walkway and cover because of weather. But today, it's all torn down. That's a sad thing.
My masterplan for Sentosa was very different from what was built. I play golf there. When I go to Hole No. 2, I look down and I see architecture with all kinds of funny designs. My friends, to irritate me so that I hit a bad shot, say: "Alan, what's your doing?" They know I get stirred up.
Have your children followed in you path?
Have your children followed in you path?
None (of the five) has. They could see the father had no time for anything else except work. I have six grandchildren. They were born with all the goodies. They have not seen a day of hardship like I did during my time. Everything's glowing, everything's so peaceful, jobs are plenty.
But there's a danger that when hard times come, they might not have the ability to galvanise themselves to withstand hardship and see things through in the same way as the older generation.
Are you optimistic or pessimistic?
Are you optimistic or pessimistic?
I am both. The young are well-educated and well-heeled to know where opportunities lie. I think they will survive.
But my bigger fear is they forget sometimes where they come from. All things have a hard start and you must remember where your source of water comes from.
My generation had to improvise and do a lot of things on our own. We did not have the luxury of the Internet, ability to travel or read a lot. Notwithstanding that, we dared to do things. We had leaders who dared to back us. They, like us, were groping around. What we did in Singapore, we were one of the first to do it: public housing, urban renewal.
We became the trailblazers for many countries, all because we dared to do things. We had the spirit where if you didn't do it, you'd never be able to do anything.
From one-man urban renewal unit to master architect
MR ALAN Choe Fook Cheong, 83, joined the Housing and Development Board in 1962 as its first architect-planner.
He designed Toa Payoh new town and led urban renewal in the city centre, initially as a one-man urban renewal unit. It was the precursor to the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore, which he founded in 1974. He was its first general manager.
He oversaw the earlier sales of state-owned sites in the city centre such as People's Park Complex and hotels along Havelock Road, Shenton Way, Golden Mile area in Beach Road, Golden Shoe and International Plaza. The influx of private developers led to new buildings, and tourism and commercial activities that fuelled Singapore's economic development.
He sat on many boards, including those of the former Singapore Tourist Promotion Board and Sentosa Development Corporation, both for 30 years.
He laid out the masterplan for and developed Sentosa, where he was its chairman from 1985 to 2001.
In 2001, he received top National Day honours, The Distinguished Service Order, for his "impressive contributions to Singapore's urban development and Sentosa's transformation".
The former Raffles Institution student studied architecture in Australia, obtaining three tertiary qualifications in six years: a fellowship diploma in architecture from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, a Bachelor of Architecture and a postgraduate diploma in town and regional planning, both from the University of Melbourne.
His foray into private practice included being senior partner at RSP Architects Planners & Engineers from 1978 to 1996.
He has four sons in their 50s and a daughter aged 28, and six grandchildren.
* Singapore’s pioneer urban planner and URA founder Alan Choe dies at 93
By Ng Keng Gene, Correspondent, The Straits Times, 28 May 2024
Pioneer urban planner Alan Choe, the first architect-planner of the Housing Board and the founder of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), died on May 27 at the age of 93.
Mr Choe made many contributions to Singapore while in public service. He was instrumental in laying the foundation for the country’s urban development and its heritage conservation programme, as well as turning Sentosa into a leisure and residential destination.
Colleagues and successors described Mr Choe as a visionary leader, the father of urban development in Singapore, and a true urbane gentleman.
Born on March 6, 1931, Mr Choe attended Pearl’s Hill School and Raffles Institution before he left for tertiary studies in Australia, where he read architecture, as well as town and regional planning.
He worked for architectural firms in Australia and Singapore before he was recruited by HDB in 1960 – the year he turned 29.
In a 2014 interview with The Straits Times, Mr Choe said he was headhunted by HDB as its first architect-planner – a title created for him. “First thing they told me: ‘Finish Queenstown’,” said Mr Choe in the interview, adding that HDB had no other planners at the time.
Queenstown – Singapore’s first satellite town – had its development initiated by the British Singapore Improvement Trust in the 1950s. The town’s development was taken over by HDB, which was formed on Feb 1, 1960.
Mr Choe said in a 1997 oral history interview that British architects had planned three of five Queenstown neighbourhoods before they left, leaving him with two to work on.
The housing densities that HDB required – 500 persons per acre, up from the 50 to 100 per acre that was the norm in Western societies – came as a shock to Mr Choe, but he pressed on and completed plans for the remaining neighbourhoods.
From 1964, Mr Choe headed HDB’s Urban Renewal Unit – the forerunner of URA, which was officially formed in 1974.
His role was to oversee urban renewal efforts for the central area and tackle housing shortages.
He worked with experts from the United Nations Development Programme – such as Norwegian town planner Erik Lorange – who were tasked in 1962 to assess if Singapore was ready for urban renewal.
Mr Choe described working with Mr Lorange in an interview published by URA in November 2019: “He came down, one to one. I was almost learning everything from him. Through him, I was able to walk every street in the Central Area.”
It was on visits overseas to learn about urban renewal that he saw reasons for Singapore to protect some of its built heritage.
“I have seen the state of urban renewal where they literally tear down all the old parts of the city. And I realised for Singapore, we have all the more reasons to preserve because we have so little,” he said.
Asked by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1967 if he had included conservation in his plans for urban renewal, Mr Choe shared his proposals for the conservation of Chinatown and Little India, among other areas.
Mr Lee responded to Mr Choe in a letter on June 3, 1967: “It is not often that I am able to get a response which showed that someone in the machine had already been thinking of the problems and feeling out for solutions and I would wish to congratulate you on the sensitivity with which urban renewal is being carried out, preserving what little there is of historic interest and recording in pictorial form for posterity what must economically be destroyed.”
Mr Choe’s work, along with the contributions of others over the years, paved the way for Singapore’s first conservation areas to be gazetted in 1989. These included 3,200 buildings in areas such as Clarke Quay and Emerald Hill.
More than 7,200 buildings are conserved today.
Former URA chief planner and chief executive Khoo Teng Chye said Mr Choe was his first boss when he joined URA in 1976. “I will always remember him as a visionary and a professional who pioneered the urban renewal and creation of Singapore’s Central Business District from slums and congestion to the modern city skyline that we see today,” said Professor Khoo, a practice professor at NUS.
“He led the drawing-up of the Central Area plan and the land reclamation for what is now Marina Bay, where our new city is,” Prof Khoo said, adding that the Government’s sale of sites programme – started in 1967 – was Mr Choe’s initiative.
It was through the programme that the private sector had a bigger role to play in Singapore’s urban development, with icons such as People’s Park Complex and Golden Mile Complex among the first to be built on sold sites.
Prof Khoo noted that Mr Choe had a “unique emphasis on quality and design”, adding that this led to many international architects designing many of Singapore’s early urban renewal projects.
“There is much that Singapore owes him for what he has contributed to the planning and building of our city. He is the father of urban development in Singapore,” he said.
Former HDB and URA chief executive Cheong Koon Hean said that Mr Choe “left a very important legacy for urban planners and architects who came after him”, adding that “the Central Area as we see today was very much influenced by his work”. Prof Cheong said she served on some design review panels with Mr Choe while she was in URA, where they evaluated plans and projects.
“Alan came across as a true urbane gentleman. He gave of his time generously, provided constructive guidance and was encouraging to the younger planners. I have deep respect for him,” said Prof Cheong, chair of the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at SUTD.
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said he fondly recalled his interactions with Mr Choe during his time at the Ministry of National Development, where Mr Choe was generous with his insights on balancing urban renewal and heritage conservation.
“His pioneering work laid the foundations for the architectural design, quality and planning that continue to shape today’s Singapore,” he wrote on Facebook on May 28.
National Development Minister Desmond Lee, writing on Facebook on May 28, said Mr Choe helped plan many of Singapore’s early public housing estates, and “showed remarkable foresight in safeguarding our older buildings”. He added: “His legacy will continue to inspire and influence generations.”
In an oral history interview in 1998, Mr Choe said he left the public service in September 1978 as he had increasingly been dragged into policy work as a senior public servant, and wanted to return to his first love – designing buildings.
He joined architectural firm RSP as a senior partner and worked on projects such as Parkway Parade and the Monetary Authority of Singapore Building. He also had a hand in developing the Singapore Indoor Stadium with Japanese architect Kenzo Tange.
He left RSP as a consultant in 1997, but continued to be involved in public projects outside his private sector work, such as Sentosa.
Mr Choe was a Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) board member between 1972 and 1977, deputy chairman of SDC from 1977 to 1985, and chairman from 1985 to 2001.
Ms Thien Kwee Eng, CEO of SDC, said Mr Choe “was a visionary leader and an urban planner, who was instrumental in safeguarding Sentosa as a recreational resort island”.
She said that Mr Choe “was personally involved in driving the transformation of the island to be a leading destination for locals and international guests by proposing and developing many well-loved attractions such as Fort Siloso, a Coralarium, Palawan Beach Lagoon, the musical fountain and a world-class golf course”.
Mr Choe also helped to build the island’s first monorail system in 1982 and a causeway link in 1992, building on efforts to boost connectivity to the island after 1974, when the world’s first cable car system spanning a harbour was opened, connecting Sentosa to the mainland.
As SDC’s chairman, Mr Choe “introduced incentives to help attract private investments to Sentosa, and advocated more transformative developments, including the luxurious ocean front enclave Sentosa Cove”, said Ms Thien.
She added that he “was a big advocate of preserving Sentosa’s natural beauty and heritage”, emphasising balance between commercial needs and retaining its identity and greenery.
“We extend our heartfelt condolences to Alan’s family, friends and colleagues. As we mourn his passing, we also celebrate a life well lived and a legacy that will continue to inspire and guide future generations,” said Ms Thien.
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