Christopher C. M.

Lee (2015) Type and the developmental city: housing Singapore, The Journal of
Architecture, 20:6, 988-1031, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2015.1115419 To link to this article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2015.1115419

Tema: tipología y ciudad (en ciudades en desarrollo)

Teoría general: Tipología edilicia (Quatremere de Quincy, Argan, Vidler): morfología

urbana,
Teoría sustantiva: teoría de los hechos urbanos (Rossi), desarrollo urbano ? ciudades en
desarrollo , urbanización

Conceptos:
 urban artefact (hechos urbanos): arquitectura que encarna la idea de la ciudad,
propone la dialéctica entre la regla y la excepción. (Rossi)
 dominant type. Lo propone en dialéctica con la idea de tipo de Rossi, reinterpretado
para estudiar a las ciudades en desarrollo (Singapur) en oposición a la ciudad
histórica europea. Lo define con tres principios
 los elementos que son típicos en la ciudad y encarnan la idea de lo que es
común (the common entendido como el cuerpo de conocimiento
acumulativo construido, entiende al tipo como un aprendizaje, un desarrollo
común entre los ciudadanos y la ciudad), un marco comun entre el
conocimiento arquitectónico y el contrato social.
 son la materialización de un proyecto político en evolución, una
manifestación del poder político.
 La idea y la estructura profunda (fundamental) del tipo dominante
evolucionan simultáneamente, su estructura es flexible y actúa como marco
de organización que interviene en los procesos sociales, económicos y
políticos y permite al tipo dominante actuar como un mediador maleable.
 ciudad genérica: Koolhaas lo define como la ciudad que es indómita, abierta y
maleable, imposible de asociar a una forma conocida o visible (fortaleza, ciudadela).
Lee plantea que esta descripción tiende a estructurar un discurso sobre Oriente
construido en oposición a la ciudad occidental (como lo exotico y aberrante) y
propone entender lo genérico a través del tipo dominante, como aquello que es
típico pero con potencial de transformación, estructuras de organización
instrumentales y pragmáticas pero profundamente políticas.
 The third typology (vidler)
 CITAS

Lo generico asociado al tipo

the generic refers to something that is common in a class, a group of individuals or

species of individuals. That is to say, what is most typical among different individuals

The generic is thus the typical with the potential for transformation. This categorisation
concurs with Quatremère’s understanding of type and character, for type bears the
irreducible general or essential character that serves as the rule for further generation
with distinctive and relative character.

it is thus logical to understand the Generic City through its dominant type, as the most
typical element that constitutes the city, both concretely and in abstraction. To
interrogate the city in this way is to go beyond the characterisation of the generic city
through its (lack of) identity as visible form or image. As these dominant types arose
from a blank slate, their ideas are not historically constituted. Furthermore, their deep
structures are not abstracted from historical architectural precedents as perfected
models. Instead, the deep structure of these dominant types exists as the irreducible
structure that organises. It is deployed and evaluated for its instrumentality to accomplish
pragmatic concerns that nevertheless are deeply politicised.

Pier Vittorio Aureli also accounts for the etymology of the word ‘generic’ in these two
categories. He uses the generic, however, as a fundamental category of capitalist
production. For Aureli, the generic becomes explicit through its abstraction and finds its
spatial and architectural correspondence in the ’typical plan’—an architecture reduced to
its most essential and universal structural system. Pier Vittorio Aureli, ’Architecture for
Barbarians: Ludwig Hilberseimer and the Rise of the Generic City’, AA Files, 63 (London,
The Architectural Association, 2011), pp.3–18. For the ‘Typical Plan’, see Francesco
Marullo, ’Generic and Typical Plan’: <http://thecityasaproject.org/2011/04/generic/>
[accessed 15/01/11].

Esto servirá de manera crucial para profundizar en la discusión sobre el tipo dominante
y la idea de ciudad, y para mostrar que el primero puede entenderse como un marco
común, un conocimiento arquitectónico compartido y un contrato social.

Programas de vivienda en singapur

Se usa el tipo de high rise buiding para construir muchas viviendas en poca superficie

Alta densidad

1era fase -Erradicación de slums y accion sobre tabula rasa en área central

Predominantly built as 6- to 20-storey slab blocks, a total of 19, 372 flats were created. Within only
two years, from 1962 to 1964, 2,528 flats were designed and built. The whole development, hastily
built for 150,000 people, is made up of predominantly 12-storey slab blocks, all orientated north-
south to avoid the east-west sun (Fig. 5). The influence of Le Corbusier’s The Contemporary City
for Three Million (1922) is considerable, as three of its four principles were adopted: ‘1.) We must
decongest the centres of our cities. 2.) We must augment their density. 3.) We must increase the
means of getting about. ’ 4.) We must increase parks and open spaces.’

However, Queenstown differs from The Contemporary City for Three Million in that the former is
made up largely of housing blocks without the latter’s functional zoning, centring of high-rise towers
and setting-back of mid-rise blocks to create a recognisable centre, with the grand axes and vast
open spaces between building blocks. Thus, Queenstown adopted the most technocratic aspect,
without the pleasure that accompanied the plans of Le Corbusier— the grand vistas, the
compositional form afforded by prototypes and a city set within a vast green open space (Fig. 6).

2da fase – ciudades satellite

strategy of decentralisation, new towns are planned satellite developments comprising very large
housing provision

development of new towns marking the second public housing phase of the HDB that continued
to the late 1970s.

3era fase – en busca de una identidad – precincts

main planning unit of new towns with an emphasis on spatial definition and enclosure of open
communal space. The idea of ‘precinct’ was introduced to bring character back to housing estates.
A precinct is a cluster of blocks surrounding an open space with associated facilities and it formed
the main planning unit of new towns with an emphasis on spatial definition and enclosure of open
communal space.

Total design through the dominant type

This act of planning is undertaken with an emphasis on the development of standards or prototypes,
and covers four different but intricately related scales: Flat Design, Block Design, Residential Site
Planning and New Town Planning.

In this period, six prototypes were produced—the Emergency, Standard, Improved, New
Generation, Model ‘A’ and Simplified—in chronological order and in varying sizes (Fig. 13). The
evolution in the size and organisation of rooms in these prototypes mirrored the various national
convulsions and socialpolitical expectations of the time.

Evolucion de los tipos

The Emergency prototypes of the early 1960s measured only 23sqm and were arranged in linear
slab blocks of 12 storeys. Designed and built in a short period of time to address the housing crisis
and relocations fromthe clearance of slums in the central area, these prototypes were notorious for
their dark and poorly ventilated common corridors and their uncompromising uniformity. By the late
1960s and early 1970s, with the crisis of rehousing slum dwellers abated and the rise in
expectations for better living conditions, larger units were developed, growing from the 1-room to 2-
room and 3-room flats. Their layouts were ‘improved’ to reflect climatic conditions and the Asian
lifestyle, ie, all kitchens and bathrooms were naturally ventilated and a room-to-rooms layout was
adopted as opposed to the corridor to- rooms layout of English social housing flats. This means that
the living and dining areas are the central space of the flat that is naturally ventilated, with different
rooms arranged around them. As the prototypes continue to evolve, the layouts of the units create a
plan of high-rise slabs and towers that have an unusually large surface area compared to their
counterparts in Europe and America.
Prefabricacion y estandarizacion

Part-to-whole relationships that govern architectural compositions and provide coherence in scalar
shifts are, in the relationship between flat design and block design, governed more by factors of
efficiency, the environment and the social-cultural norms of South East Asians

These high rise blocks can be classified as predominantly two block types: the slab block and the
tower block (figs 14, 15). Both these blocks are developed as elemental parts to shape the massing
for the site plan of the large neighbourhood or precinct.

Parametros para entender tipos

Parameters that have to be considered in understanding the evolution of these blocks are: internal
area to circulation area (eficiencia, lo mide como un porcentaje), distance between fire escapes,
unit sizes, numbers of lifts and height.

Slabs

As the units increased further to a 3-Room Standard, the single loaded corridor was further
shortened and terminated on each side by a corner unit, thereby reducing the number of units
sharing a common corridor and creating a gradient of privacy and differential desirability on each
floor. This in part was achieved by centralizing the fire escapes with the lifts (Fig. 16).
Torres

The tower block has a much higher efficiency (high internal area to circulation area) compared to
the slab block, a higher lift to unit ratio per floor and thus offers more privacy. Due to the
requirement of ventilation for all rooms (including bathrooms and kitchens), the tower plans are
highly inflected to give a high vertical surface area.

The tower block would not be possible with smaller units. This is because efficiency will drop if the
tower comprised the
same number of smaller units; to increase the number of smaller units per core in a tower block is
also not possible as it would entail a large circulation area to net floor area (Fig. 17).
The combination of these two block types has been utilised by the HDB as elemental compositional
blocks to create site plans that are definable as unique neighbourhoods.

Bloques orientados sobre las calles para definir limites y espacios cerrados y torres utilizadas como
landmarks

Superblocks

The subsequent evolution of block designs saw their employment in various combinations to create
a larger super
Block used to capture and define large communal open spaces or form the alignments as
accentuations of site boundaries, streets and topography (Fig. 19).
Especificidad de singapur

By 1989, at the end of Lee’s reign, 87% of the total population (2.1 million people) was living
in public housing,
The overwhelming presence of 2.3 million completed flats is a stark reminder of the might and
ability of the government. The dominant type of high-rise, high-density public housing is ideological.
It is a powerful symbol of the state’s ability to fulfil its promise to improve the living conditions of the
entire nation with resounding success: the political manifested as architecture.

the next lap

En una fase posterior se tiene como objetivo no solo la vivienda sino el desarrollo urbano en
relacion al placer, el espacio abierto y el paisaje

Se trabaja sobre normas para hacer a las viviendas mas verdes, con expansiones vegetadas,
espacios abiertos verdes etc (terrazas verdes a cambio de mayor constructibilidad etc)

Here, the dominant type is changed using market incentives to achieve a political goal. This was
realised not by a seminal building that transformed the architectural culture of the nation, but
through incremental and small tactical adjustments to developmental parammeters that affect the
deep structure of the dominant type, and stem from a political agenda and the ability of state
machinery to implement a whole vision through its parts.

Ultima fase – the spectacle of the city

This time it involved the idea of the city as a spectacle: To remake the economy and attract talent,
we
have also got to remake our city.

Organizan concurso para hacer la torre mas alta del mundo para public housing

The competition brief stressed that public housing was no longer low-cost but rather quality
affordable housing

Sobre el exito o fracaso de la vivienda publica (diferencias entre Asia america y Europa)

The success and failure of public housing depends considerably on the policies related to it. Chua
in his Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stakeholding in Singapore has argued that Singapore’s
public housing programme has been successful because it combined the strategies of de-
commodification with a limited role for the market. It differs from that in the US, where the provision
of public housing is dictated by the market and rent subsidies became profits for landlords, and from
socialist systems in Europe, where the absence of returns on capital resulted in the cessation of
public-housing construction. In the former, it failed ‘because of the high cost of land and production
due to profit maximization by all actors involved in the market-based economic organization of
housing activities and restrictive allocation, which leads to concentration of the lowest-income
groups, thus creating serious financial difficulties for local housing authorities’.33
In socialist states such as Hungary and Poland, total de-commodification, its universal provision as
a basic right for every citizen and the very marginal rent derived from it, made housing a great drain
on the national economy

Besides the absence of uncontrollable rural-urban migration, Chua argued that in Singapore’s case,
there were five crucial features that ensured its success. The first is the PAP government’s
commitment to universal housing provision. The eligibility income ceiling for lease ownership is
reviewed periodically in step with economic growth, with 90% of households in the country eligible.
He argues that ‘This commitment is, in part, ideologically motivated by the PAP’s belief that home
ownership, in giving the people a greater stake in thenation, will induce in them a greater measure
of nationalism. However, unlike in the socialist system, this belief does not extend to regarding
the level of housing as a natural entitlement or right.’34 As such, the HDB operates like any private
developer, sensitive to the demands of buyers and making its operations economically viable. The
second is the de-commodification of public housing, made possible by the 1966 Land Acquisition
Act, which enabled the state to build at a significantly lower cost, as land is completely owned by
the state. And because 90% of existing households are eligible for public housing, the HDB is
virtually the monopolistic provider of housing for the nation, thus enabling it to set the level of house
prices in line with the general state of the country’s economy. The third involves the equitable
distributionof subsidies, where lower-income groups have access to higher subsidies compared to
higher-income groups. Fourth, the financial resources needed by the government for publichousing
construction comes from the statemanaged, employee’s compulsory social security savings fund,
the Central Provident Fund (CPF).

Vivienda publica y capitalism

The HDB inadvertently is the largest mortgagee in the nation. This final feature ensures that
housing consumption is ‘tied exclusively to the ability to pay. The type of flat rented or purchased
is dependent entirely on what the household itself can afford, no other measure is considered’.
Public housing is also a good investment as it can be sold in the open market after five years to
those eligible to buy. The vendor is entitled to keep the capital gains tax free and is permitted to
apply for a new upgraded HDB flat, with the maximum number of up-grades limited to one. This,
according to Chua, shows that universal housing provision and a capitalist economy are not
incompatible and is in fact a key to its success.

Como opera el dominant type

The success of the developmental state also depends on it consistently producing tangible progress, whereby the continuous
improvement and upgrading of housing provision transforms the very dominant type that is discussed here. Thus then continuous
reinvention and improvement of the dominant type is quintessential to the political project of succeeding prime ministers. In the
case of the dominant type of the tower and slab block, its instrumentality and pliability lay in its generic character, reduced to its
deep structure at the point of inception. This gave it a generative potential that is specific enough to articulate particular
architectural and planning goals and yet general enough for further transformation. Crucially, the dominant type embodies the
idea of the city as a developmental city state and is used as a diagnostic and prognostic device for all those involved in its
production (Fig. 25).

Ideologia – cosmovision oriental -confusio- vs europea

This philosophical base and its idea of the city, ie, the space of coexistence, is fundamentally different to the Greek conception
and serves to distinguish the understanding of the dominant type from Rossi’s urban artefact, the latter being tied to the
idea of the polis. The historical European city can be understood through its dominant types as both rule and exception:
housing being the rule, and its monuments being the exception. This separation between thespace of ’economy’ (housing) and
the space of ’politics’ (monuments: public spaces or buildings)—that is, the separation between the private and the public realm
—is embodied in the very definition of the city as first provided by Aristotle in Politics The word polis, meaning city/state as
well as being the root for ’politics’ in English, is defined by Aristotle ’ as a space of coexistence for the common good,
which can only come into existence through consensus.
Thus, this idea of what is common, the polis, is one that is separate from the space that concerns the economic management of the
household. Therefore, the city as a common artefact, a monument, is one that stands apart from the extended fabric of
housing or the space of urbanisation. It is finite, punctual and legible (Fig. 26).

(ver esto en aureli)

The conception of the Chinese city is inseparable from the Chinese imperial city of the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046–256 BC)
onwards.
The Chinese imperial city was conceived as a whole; its limits conceptually predetermined and physically demarcated by city
walls (Fig. 27).38 Here, I would argue that there is only rule. A single dominant type defines the entire city. The quadrangle
house, defined by walls and free-standing pavilions, houses all functions of the city, from family dwellings, to clinics, temples,
schools and the imperial palace (Fig. 28). A single irreducible structure, the wall gives definition to the various scales of the city
and is transparent to programme and function. This is due to the Chinese conception of the universe as being a complete whole
—’all under one heaven’. The city thus is seen as a large framework that is all encompassing

Aristotle’s exaltation of the polis as a finite space for association, education and contemplation for
men, as one that is separate from the space of the household (private space), as well as from the
expanded territory made up of agricultural land and wilderness, is the embodiment of dualism. For
the Chinese,the maintenance of equilibriumbetween binary opposites, in perpetual alternation,
rather than in confrontation and displacement, is fundamental to polarism. Therefore, there is no
separation between the family unit and the state, and there is no conception of the individual standing separate from its other, in
confrontation and opposition.

en términos de Rossi la Vivienda publica en bsas es monumento o es tejido?

Conclusiones

Type here is generic, that is, typical with the potential for transformation. It can be concluded
that Singapore as a developmental city state in the tropics, starting almost from a blank slate, gave
rise to a set of pronounced dominant types—the tower and slab block of HDB housing and the
podium block. In this way, it differs from the third typology (vidler), which depended on the historical
city for its definition and constitution.
The dominant type here owes its operativity to the pliability of its deep structure. It is shaped by a
political ideology that emphasises the efficacy of pragmatism. Due to these conditions, from which
the dominant types emerged, their origins necessitate that the dominant type is always in a state of
becoming, as long as the political legitimacy of a developmental city state holds a consensus. It is a
social contract and a framework of recognition, a reified typical architectural object.
The dominant type is a discursive index of power relationships.

Indeed, the dominant type acquires a political agency if it is understood as a common framework
that enables an inclusive process of change and transformation.

Para que sirve estudiar esto – operatividad y apropiación del dominant type

The deep structure of the dominant type, as much as it can be appropriated by the state, can also be appropriated by its other. It is
a medium, a recognisable framework for negotiation and cooperation: a social contract. The awareness of this form of efficacious
pragmatism is not solely to enable the operativity of praxis; as a matter of fact, I argue that the ability to detect, describe, analyse
and theorise the dominant type is the first step in surpassing it, which involves a choice and decision upon the closure of analysis
—and thus a political act.

Perhaps, what is being expressed here is the possibility of architecture, through its disciplinary
knowledge, being a means for emancipation from within. This involves the identification of the
dominant type and the logic of its proliferation. Furthermore, the dominant types of the
developmental city state should not be seen as the culmination of an architecture for a nation or a
people, but only a traceable beginning, and one that is still becoming. Thus to understand the deep
structure of the dominant types, and redefining the understanding of type and typology here, is a
response to a totality of architecture tied to its role in the discursive idea of the city, and thenceforth
we can proceed in two ways: to harness the cumulative knowledge and intelligence of the deep
structure for further variation or completely to destroy its deep structure, that is, to displace its
validity on its very own terms, to start anew.

En español

Quizás, lo que aquí se expresa es la posibilidad de que la arquitectura, a través de su saber

disciplinar, sea un medio de emancipación desde dentro. Esto implica la identificación del tipo
dominante y la lógica de su proliferación. Además, los tipos dominantes de la ciudad-estado en
desarrollo no deben verse como la culminación de una arquitectura para una nación o un pueblo,
sino solo como un comienzo rastreable y que aún se está convirtiendo. Así entender la estructura
profunda de los tipos dominantes, y redefinir aquí la comprensión de tipo y tipología, es una
respuesta a una totalidad de arquitectura ligada a su papel en la idea discursiva de ciudad, y en
adelante podemos proceder de dos formas: aprovechar el conocimiento acumulado y la inteligencia
de la estructura profunda para una mayor variación o destruir completamente su estructura
profunda, es decir, desplazar su validez en sus propios términos, para comenzar de nuevo.