Adaptive Reuse Across Asia: Singapore's Fragmented Ownership, Japan's Rural Revival, & Korea's Material Limits
An interview with Architect Calvin Chua
We debate policy and push for development, but what about the actual city that emerges? For my fellow urbanists and YIMBYs, I hope this interview offers something a bit new. The aesthetics, forms, and textures born from history, politics, resources, and constraints. Beyond regulations and economic models, how do planning ideas manifest visually? What does adaptive reuse mean beyond headline projects?
Cities don't follow master plans, but what exactly does that mean? They're shaped by who owns what, what materials are available, and what communities actually need. Calvin Chua and his firm, Spatial Anatomy, studies these hidden forces through design projects, research, and strategic planning across challenging contexts worldwide. He also teaches design studios at SUTD focusing on peripheral zones and adaptation paradigms and was the festival director of Singapore’s Archifest 2023. He written a few interesting books including Singapore Strata Malls: A Retrospective for the Future and Unit. Volume 2: Golden Mile Complex.
Singapore: When Ownership Gets Complicated
Singapore's "strata malls" let individuals own shops outright, not rent them. Any building change needs 80% owner approval. Result: retirees treating shops as social clubs, refusing million-dollar buyouts. These malls become uncurated havens for niche businesses and retirement communities disguised as retail.
Chua discovered this while researching strata malls and planning Paya Lebar Air Base redevelopment. Finding that owners saw shops as retirement security changed how his team approached preserving 1,800 hectares of heritage buildings.
Singapore labels everything temporary as "interim": schools, housing, bus stops. These "temporary" solutions routinely last 20+ years.
Korean Peninsula: Design Across Division
For the 2017 Seoul Biennale, Chua built a replica Pyongyang apartment in Seoul. 36 square meters showing how people actually live versus headlines about missiles. His "Pyonghattan" project used replication to make complex conditions accessible without sensationalizing.
From 2012-2019, Chua trained urban planners in Pyongyang through an NGO. He goes over the constraints: no steel imports mean everything's concrete. Result: 40-story towers with walls so thick they eat living space. Kim Jong-un mandates bright colors for modernity, creating colorful but chunky buildings. Juche self-reliance ideology made physical.
Nuances of Adaptive Reuse
Chua distinguishes between different scales and models of reuse. High-capital conversions like Tate Modern (power plant to museum) or Zeitz MOCAA (grain silo to gallery) grab headlines as architectural showpieces. Every city wants one. But these represent just one approach.
More compelling to Chua are systematic, community-focused efforts. Karl Bengs renovating abandoned kominka in dying Japanese villages creates actual homes, not tourist attractions. Some villages see their first births in decades. This model now attracts international investors, creating a new rural real estate sector. The tension: are we saving communities or displacing them?
Even temporary reuse matters. For Singapore Archifest 2023, Chua curated "Interim: Acts of Adaptation," exploring how spaces awaiting demolition could be activated. He wanted to take over the vacated Golden Mile Complex for a month but settled for activating heritage precincts with pavilions. The Green Agora project during COVID showed how modular structures in peripheral farms could become community gathering spaces that evolve over time.
The key insight across all scales: successful adaptation requires understanding both structure and spirit. Preserving buildings without their communities creates museums. Maintaining communities without functional spaces leads to decay. The challenge is achieving both.
Overall
Think ethnographic research that scales up. Small finding (shop owners see stores as retirement security) reshapes massive planning (airbase redevelopment). He literally builds replicas of spaces to make complex conditions understandable. No manifestos, just "walk through this and you'll get it."
Cities emerge from:
Ownership structures creating unexpected social dynamics
Material constraints determining aesthetics
Political systems defining urban values
Gaps between intended and actual use
Chua calls himself "cautiously optimistic." After seeing how cities actually develop through constraints, workarounds, and community adaptation, that seems right.
For those engaged in shaping future cities, this conversation reveals how the "spirit" of a place, its tangible feel and character, is intrinsically linked to its physical form, history, and the constraints under which it was built. If you seek insights beyond immediate development debates to understand the deeper design currents shaping urban environments, enjoy the full interview.
Introduction
Dave Deek: I'm keen to discuss your work, or Spatial Anatomy's work, or however you like to phrase it, especially how you're integrating design, research, and even advocacy in, let's face it, challenging contexts.
Calvin Chua: Yeah, I would say that when I started the practice, it was meant to be a research-led practice. Hence, when I was choosing the name, I considered what would be a way to represent the nature of the firm. We don't believe in delivering, let's say, manifestos. But at the same time, that's not to say that we only respond and react. We have a lot of intentions and positions towards the built environment.
Calvin Chua: But at the same time, we want to move away from just having a kind of top-down manifesto, pushing it at people. Hence, that's how the word "anatomy" was used – as a way to describe the study of the structure of spaces, hence "spatial anatomy," just like how you would study the structure of animals or plants, like plant or animal anatomy. That's really the genesis of it. It is also a way for the practice to view the world.
Calvin Chua: I spoke to some friends; they think that it's almost bordering part architecture, part policy, part research, part art. If you can't put anything into a classification.. It's a way to see the world. I think it has got to do with my interest in international relations, in geopolitics.
Calvin Chua: And that is probably a way to look at the world, our built environment, and to try to talk about these contested spaces, both within the urban realm at a territorial scale, through the practice. I think that's really the gist of the practice.
Influences and Approach
Calvin Chua: If you read the description of the practice, it gives you quite a lot of detail. But if I want to summarize it, it's really just that.
Dave Deek: Hmm. So that's interesting. I'm trying to figure out the best way... my mind described it. It seems – and don't take this the wrong way – but it seems more of an internationalist line of thinking. You have Miyazaki who has this idea about art reflecting the human individual experience, about more of an internationalist approach. Is that the best way to describe it, or not really?
Calvin Chua: Not really. I would say that if I were to look at some of the early references, what got me into architecture was really, let's say, the 1990s OMA publications on S,M,L,XL, Great Leap Forward, or research on shopping malls with Harvard's Project on the City.
Calvin Chua: I think all these different books had an incredible influence on my decision to study architecture. For example, the essay "Berlin Wall's Architecture" within S,M,L,XL. I think it was written so eloquently that the architecture of the wall that marks a division of two parts of a city is made by decision-makers thousands of kilometers away. There's a certain kind of poetry in there, a certain seductiveness in the way Rem [Koolhaas] kind of romanticized, perhaps glorified, this wall as something that's urban yet political. I think that was really some of my inspiration, if you will, for how I view the built environment. Yeah.
Dave Deek: I'm guessing...
Calvin Chua: Maybe not internationalist, more of a curious way of looking at the world, observing the world, right? Yeah. And activist without a large manifesto banner; it's more of a quiet way of revealing these conditions and hopefully, it could inspire change along the way.
Early Experiences and Political Theory
Dave Deek: So I'm guessing that leans into your earlier experience with – please correct me if I'm wrong about pronouncing these names – like Cecil [Balmond] and Fundación Metrópoli? Am I pronouncing those correctly?
Calvin Chua: Mhm. Yep. I would say it's my experience even before practice. I think I would mention that before I started practicing, I was studying with Pier Vittorio Aureli at the Architectural Association (AA). And I think, to a large extent, that had a huge impact on the way I think about the built environment, the city, and politics. I was very much exposed to political theory and urban form – how certain political theories would result in certain kinds of urban form and ways of managing.
Calvin Chua: When he talks about politics, it's not politics in terms of the administration of day-to-day matters or office politics, but political theory – positions in politics that influence, for example, the origins of micro-districts, which were only possible through socialist forms. Or perhaps the idea of the emancipation of women through the redesign of the Frankfurt kitchen, the idea of communal living within the living room, or the living room being a productive space. I think there are certain political systems that shape such spaces, and that's very important.
Calvin Chua: That left a very strong imprint in terms of how I practice or how I view the environment. And when I was practicing with Cecil Balmond and Fundación Metrópoli, I think it was a way of furthering my exploration in the built environment with practices that are tangentially related to architecture, like Cecil Balmond, who is a structural engineer...
Dave Deek: Mhm.
Calvin Chua: working with architects to realize a lot of amazing buildings. From For Fundación Metrópoli, it's an urban planning firm that positions itself more like an ambassador’s office than a consultancy firm..
Shifting Contexts: Europe vs. Asia (Neoliberalism, Regional Blocs)
Dave Deek: That's actually interesting, especially when you're dealing with... you talk a lot about political factors and stuff like that affecting how you view architecture. But this brings up to my mind, even with political values like the socialist perspective, when you switch from a European socialist context to, let's say, an Asian socialist context, there's still a difference. Even though they're nominally socialist, there's still a difference between the two, right? I'm guessing you're seeing a lot of these shifts when you move from a European to an Asian context. How does that change the nature of the urban problems? Does it get more complex because you're dealing with even more variation among the political ideologies, or is it just more of a geopolitical thing where it's less about political ideology shifting from one location to another? Just each place has its own political ideology, and it's wrong to even think that they're similar?
Calvin Chua: I would say perhaps the dominant political ideology, or rather the lack of political ideology over the past 15 years, is this entire neoliberal order. It's so pervasive. It affects North America, Europe, Asia, but I think its impact is felt very differently. It was much more well-received in Asia as compared to Europe. I think there was a huge pushback after the global financial crisis in '08 and '09, and there was a shift towards more left-leaning politics. But in Asia, it wasn't impacted that much. What we see today are still traces of that.
Calvin Chua: But I think the main contextual difference for me in terms of practice between Europe and Asia is not the political or economic systems, but the regional blocs, the EU and ASEAN.
Calvin Chua: I feel that within Europe, it is entirely possible to practice across borders through the EU, and there's a much stronger network of practitioners compared to Southeast Asia. One reason why I moved back from Europe to Singapore, Southeast Asia specifically, is that at a certain point, I felt that I knew more about Europe than Southeast Asia. I felt that it's important to be back in Southeast Asia and be connected with practitioners and friends around the regio
Practice Methodology: Intersection of Design, Planning, Advocacy
Dave Deek: I would love to probe more into detail, but your time is valuable, so I'm going to have to move forward. Again, that's fantastic, by the way. Let's just poke and prod more about your practice. I believe that you operate at basically the intersection of design, planning, and advocacy, as you clearly stated in your previous answers.
Calvin Chua: It's challenging to get projects, even if you're a big practice. But I think what that means is that every project we work on has to have an impact. It needs to deliver value – not just for the client, but value in terms of discourse. How it's part of a larger portfolio of ideas and interests. It is more of an emergent process, instead of a typical business development way like, "We are specialists in hospitality," "We're specialists in commercial properties," or "specialists in bungalows." We do the reverse. Every project that comes in, we'll look at it and discuss, "Okay, how does this fit within the agenda of rethinking the peripheries?" "How does this fit within our interest, our agenda of adaptation and reuse, engagement?" Yeah. So that's how we view projects.
Research Methods: Ethnography, Replication, Diplomacy
Dave Deek: You talk about how you view your projects. Let's talk more about your methodology because, from everything I read, your methodology uses a mixture. Besides your global experience, you use research, ethnography, and in some cases, even diplomacy. How does your methodology affect your design process in its own unique way?
Calvin Chua: The process itself is very much dependent on the type of project or the scale of it. If it's an exhibition, that allows us to provide a stronger commentary on the politics behind certain urbanism, or geopolitics. In the case of us replicating an apartment or replicating a textile factory production room in North Korea, or replicating a mall unit in Singapore. The methodology is very much about establishing some form of replication. I think we are very inspired by artists like Gerhard Richter or Thomas Demand, where the idea of copying—or rather, replicating—the space exudes an uncanny resemblance, but at the same time, it's not a real copy.
Calvin Chua: So I think that method of replication allows us to engage the audience in a much more accessible way. If it's a very loaded topic, you need to make it accessible but without cheapening it by simply making it a “blockbuster” copy of the actual thing. For us, there's always this layer of subtle translation, presenting complex conditions in a relatively easily understandable way. Through experiencing the exhibition, you may feel that uncanny resemblance, and that gives another reading of the context.
Calvin Chua: In terms of our other projects, like urban master plans and so on, that is very much an application, rather a translation, of our research on adaptation into certain design strategies. So it's pretty much a non-linear process...
Dave Deek: Could you go more in-depth about those design strategies?
Case Study: Paya Lebar Air Base & Strata Malls (Feedback Loop, Ethnography, Adaptive Reuse)
Calvin Chua: ...where we build up our research that can then be applied to some of our master plans. Yeah. So, the design strategies... Okay, perhaps I could share a little bit, maybe use two projects to highlight the kind of feedback loop we get.
Calvin Chua: We were working on the Paya Lebar Air Base master plan while also conducting a year-long research project on the future of strata malls in Singapore. These two projects are of different scales. One is redesigning an existing military airbase at a scale of 1,800 hectares. Whereas the research on strata malls is of a much smaller scale; it's at a building scale, while the other is at a territorial scale. But a certain dialogue was established when we were working on the projects together at the same time.
Calvin Chua: As we were researching strata malls, we took an ethnographic approach to uncover the social fabric of these malls. We gradually realized that these malls were functioning like retirement villages for some of these shopkeepers or shop owners. That's also the reason why some of them refused to support the collective sale of the entire building. It was through this ethnographic process, through interviews and so on, that allowed us to uncover something more fundamental: why do they not support the sale of the building?
Calvin Chua: And that, in itself, informed us that if we were to adaptively reuse any infrastructure, there needs to be a certain community value incentive in terms of land development – retrofitting the existing infrastructure to safeguard the existing community or incentivizing developers to participate in enhancing community values in existing heritage infrastructure.
Calvin Chua: So we translated that into a design strategy for the existing heritage buildings within the airbase – the terminal buildings, what we deem as "everyday heritage buildings." We were speculating which buildings to keep, where they're sited, and can we incentivize participation from a land development incentives angle for these heritage buildings.
Calvin Chua: So, in a very roundabout way, I would say that the research at an ethnographic scale allows us to uncover a more structural issue that then allows us to apply that to an urban master plan that requires larger-scale strategic, maybe even policy changes. Yeah.
Strata Malls: Structure and Spirit, "Heroic" Architecture
Dave Deek: So, I want to go further a bit more into the strata mall stuff. This reminds me of what, if I remember correctly... bear in mind, I'm dealing with scanned PDFs from the Harvard library... your Strata Mall book was talking about structure and spirit, right? Is that along the same way to think about it?
Calvin Chua: Mhm. Yes.
Calvin Chua: The reason why we structured the book in terms of structure and spirit is very much because of the ground engagement we did, not just with strata malls but with some of the state-developed HDB malls, which have a similar quality.
Calvin Chua: Before we started the research, we had always taken a very architectural approach. It was about conserving modernist heritage buildings; some of these malls were designed by pioneer generation architects that manifested the heroic qualities of the buildings that reflected their zeitgeist. At the same time, I ran a design seminar program at SUTD where I got students to come up with adaptive reuse proposals, ideas for some of the strata malls.
Calvin Chua: But very quickly, when you start to do ground research, you realize that conserving the structure is just half of the equation. It's the spirit of the place – the inhabitants, the willingness to stay on, to have a sense of purpose to stay on, the will to operate the business within a mall – that is extremely important. That's where we introduced the fact that you need to consider both the structure and the spirit of a mall to diagnose its health.
Calvin Chua: And then, through that, we can have a more frank discussion about how to decide the future of the mall: Do we rejuvenate it, or do we embark on a graceful decommissioning process?
Dave Deek: Hmm. And... did I hear that correctly? You said heroic properties?
Calvin Chua: Heroic, yeah. I mean, for example, Golden Mile Complex, People's Park Complex – these were heroic megastructure buildings built in the late 1960s. Yeah. So they were very heroic. But I think if we go beyond these two heroic modernist icons, these two buildings actually spawned many other strata malls...
Calvin Chua: ...which may not be architecturally as interesting, but socially, programmatically, they're very interesting. Right. Yeah.
Dave Deek: So heroic in the terms that they support the community? They do something good?
Calvin Chua: Not entirely. No, I think what I meant by heroic is in terms of its form, how it looks architecturally.
Dave Deek: Okay. Okay. Alright.
Calvin Chua: Yeah. It's brutalist. It's like Paul Rudolph with his Lower Manhattan Expressway sort of structure. That kind of heroic.
Dave Deek: Okay, that kind of heroic. Okay. Okay.
Calvin Chua: Yeah. Yeah.
Digital Preservation & Experimentation (Beauty World, Digital Twin, Metaverse)
Dave Deek: Alright, let's talk about another one of your projects that I believe is called the Beauty World project, which is talking about digital preservation. So that reminds me of a concept that we talk a lot about in the oil and gas and chemical industry called the digital twin. I'm guessing the same concept but more for urban design? Could you explain more about that?
Calvin Chua: Yeah, I'm sure we hear "digital twin" being thrown around in different sectors: oil and gas, construction (the digital twin of the building). You could do clash detection. And on the urban scale, there are multiple digital twins, where you could have city dashboards managing real-time feedback data and so on. I think it has been ongoing for the past 10 to 15 years.
Calvin Chua: But for us, it was more than just creating a digital copy or digital twin. We wanted it to be more of an artistic memorialization of the building. It was an attempt at speculating: Can the spirit of the building live on when it gets demolished? Can it be migrated to this digital platform? Not simply just as an artifact, although it could be. But the larger agenda was, could it then take on a life of its own as it lives on in the digital virtual realm?
Calvin Chua: But of course, this was a little experiment we did at the height of the metaverse hype; this was in 2022. We built something on Decentraland. It was just too cumbersome. We did a prototype with a walkthrough, and that's it. I would say this was a kind of mini artistic experiment that we engaged in. Right. Yeah.
Dave Deek: I could go on a lot about digital twin stuff. Especially since you came to the same conclusion that a lot of chemical and oil and gas industries are seeing with digital twins, right? It's a fantastic idea; it's just too much work needed to actually implement it.
Calvin Chua: Yeah. Yeah.
Strata Malls Deep Dive: Ownership, Curation, and Comparison
Dave Deek: So let's talk about other innovative urban design strategies, especially to deal with challenges like collective ownership, fragmented ownership, and all these other things, especially in the context of strata malls.
Calvin Chua: So, yeah, I think the idea of the strata mall... I'm not sure how familiar you are with the strata title.
Dave Deek: Personally, I think I see a bunch of them all over Bangkok. I've also been to Singapore, but that was only for a few days. We're just talking about these big giant malls with all these shops and stuff. In the American context...
Calvin Chua: Random shops in there. Yeah. Right.
Dave Deek: ...the closest thing you would think of is the Mall of America, or in Houston, it'll be the Galleria – these massive super malls.
Calvin Chua: But those are managed by a developer, and they're rented out.
Dave Deek: I believe so.
Calvin Chua: But strata malls are different. Every unit is owned by an individual.
Dave Deek: That I didn't know about.
Calvin Chua: So it's not managed by a single developer. Yeah. Right.
Dave Deek: Could you talk more about that?
Calvin Chua: That's why it's very interesting. The strata title act was borrowed from... it's basically an Anglo-British ownership structure format. It first emerged in Australia in 1961. It was applied to Singapore as a way to allow individuals to have a share of the land that the building sits on. So to enact any changes to the building – for example, if you want to overhaul the HVAC system, if you want to sell the building – you need to get 80% approval from everyone. I wouldn't call it a co-op; it's not a cooperative.
Calvin Chua: It's just a legal ownership structure that requires 80% of the inhabitants to agree on something before you can do anything. Because the ownership structure is so fragmented, it's very hard to curate what shops get to exist in there. But at the same time, because of the lack of curation, this subculture or unique shops start to emerge in these strata malls.
Calvin Chua: So I think going back to the point when I was talking about why some of these shop owners would block the collective sale: to some extent, they will never hit the 80% requirement to trigger a collective sale. The reason being is that a number of them view these malls as a retirement village for them. It has its own ecosystem. So for me, what's interesting is the ownership structure and the level of uncurated-ness that you find in these malls.
Dave Deek: The closest American concept would be American strip malls in more of the smaller and midsize cities, where the individual shops in the strip mall are owned by the owner itself, even though they're all part of the same thing, but on a much smaller scale. Right? The very fragmented ownership...
Calvin Chua: Yes. Right.
Dave Deek: ...very weird ownership. Some managed by management firms, other times owned by the store owner – just a bunch of chaos, and you need to get a majority of people on board.
Calvin Chua: Yes, indeed. But these strip malls have direct access to the road, right? It's not... Yeah.
Dave Deek: Yeah, that's a big difference. But it's helpful in terms of ownership and ways to think about that for the American context.
Calvin Chua: So you don't have to think about what to do if the HVAC system breaks down because you own your unit; you fix your own HVAC system. Whereas in the strata-titled mall, you have to get everyone, or 80% of the owners, to agree to pay for the overhaul or repair of the HVAC systems. So that has a certain level of contestation, which is... maybe not contestation, but yeah, the dynamics are quite interesting. Yeah.
Project: Green Agora Pavilion (Modularity, Peripheries)
Dave Deek: Okay, that's fascinating. Let's keep the party going forward. I believe you had a showcase called the Green Agora pavilion, which showcased two ideas: modularity and living structures. Could you talk more about the urban design principles behind it?
Calvin Chua: Mhm. So this was a project during COVID. I think it was a fun project. It was designed during COVID for the architectural festival. The curators wanted us to design a safe space for people to gather, and the site was actually in a farm in the northern part of Singapore. So, we collaborated with a modular aluminum company that had some of these modular structures, and we worked with them to design Green Agora, made of these aluminum extrusions. It's a pavilion lookout point for people to gather.
Calvin Chua: It was made of mesh with the hope that over time, plant creepers could grow on it, that it starts to be engulfed by creepers. And if there's interest, you could potentially have certain plants; it's almost like a vertical community garden where you could grow your own herbs. So that's the Green Agora. I think it was very much a COVID-inspired context project.
Calvin Chua: But at the same time, I think it builds on our interest, or if I could call it affinities, with building in the peripheral areas or regions of Singapore. Yeah.
Singapore Archifest 2023: "Interim: Acts of Adaptation"
Dave Deek: And then I believe that you ran Archifest, is that correct? In 2023?
Calvin Chua: 2023. Yeah.
Dave Deek: And your theme was basically "Interim: Acts of Adaptation," and you challenged the demolition cycle, which is a very interesting thing in my opinion because we tend to think more about tearing things down to build something else up rather than reuse. Could you talk more about that theme and especially the spatial and formal implications? Sorry if it sounds a little bit too wordy.
Calvin Chua: Yes. So the Singapore Archifest is a biennial architectural festival. It comprises conferences, exhibitions, talks, and so on. The Singapore Institute of Architects invites a curator to run the festival. Every curator will have their own theme. For us, we were very interested in the theme of "Interim," primarily because of our interest in urban adaptation projects, adaptive reuse, and so on.
Calvin Chua: Hence, that was why we set that as the theme. We wanted the festival to focus on talking about these interim urban spaces, how they can be activated through installations, having talks, or design workshops to look at interim buildings. To some extent, we started off with the hope of taking over Golden Mile Complex because it was vacated when we were running the festival. We were hoping the developers that bought over that strata mall would allow us to squat in that building for a month, but it was too challenging, too difficult.
Calvin Chua: So we pushed on and worked with the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the planning authority of Singapore, to find a site in a heritage area in Singapore. We turned that into a festival house and also activated the precinct by having these interim pavilions. So what started off as an interim use of a building became a rethinking of the interim at the precinct, urban, or district scale.
Calvin Chua: And if I may add, what's interesting about the term "interim" in Singapore's context is that it's used very frequently. We have interim schools where you move there for 3 to 5 years while the parent school is under renovation, or interim bus stops. Even parks are also interim sometimes. This word "interim" is a way of... it's a non-committal way of saying, "We are going to put a use to this land right now, but don't worry, it will not be there permanently." So you don't have to worry; it will go in 3 to 5 years' time. It could stay for 10 to 20 years if you like it, but because it's interim, it may go. Yeah. I think it's a very uniquely Singaporean policy speak to use the word "interim."
Dave Deek: Okay.
Calvin Chua: Or even "interim housing" is used as a way to describe rental apartments. As you might know, most Singaporeans actually own their homes. Home ownership is extremely high, even for public housing. But a small group of locals rent because they are unable to afford to purchase a house or service a mortgage. These rental flats or apartments are known as interim housing for these folks.
Calvin Chua: The idea is that they should not rent for life, but rather it's just a temporary, interim period. Once they are back on their feet, get a proper job, they can buy a house.
Dave Deek: Okay.
North Korea Engagement: Geopolitics, Training, and the Pyonghattan Exhibit
Dave Deek: Everything's a euphemism these days. Alright. So, let's go to what some might say is your more interesting work. I would love to spend more time on adaptive reuse, but I have to ask this part because other people find this more interesting. I heard that you did a project in North Korea and did an exhibit, pardon me, in South Korea showcasing a North Korean apartment. Could you talk about both projects?
Calvin Chua: Mhm. Yeah. So, in a strange way, my affinity with the Korean Peninsula started with being keen on history. When I was in junior college, I was very interested in Cold War history.. I mean, had I not studied architecture, I would have done international relations. That was why I was so enamored by the "Berlin Wall's Architecture" text by Rem Koolhaas.
Calvin Chua: So the interest in geopolitics never left me. When I was in school, I decided to take a trip to North Korea out of curiosity. That started this multi-year engagement with North Korea, from 2012 onwards until 2019, where I was working as a volunteer with a non-profit, Singapore-based NGO that does capacity-building programs in North Korea. We do training programs in multiple fields: economic zone planning, policy making, branding, advertising, finance. My area of focus was on economic zone development – the real estate side, land planning side of the training program.
Calvin Chua: So I've visited Pyongyang many times. And this project, Pyongyang Sallim or what other analysts term as Pyonghattan was the recreation of a new apartment in Pyongyang, recreating that in Seoul for the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. As I mentioned earlier, why we started to replicate—quote-unquote—an apartment was to enable South Koreans to experience what an apartment is like in North Korea.
Calvin Chua: Especially back in 2017, when they were doing all sorts of missile tests with heightened tensions, we thought it was a good way to have a healthy dialogue, to take the attention away from nuclear missiles to: How do Koreans live in Pyongyang? What does it mean to be a person with a higher socio-economic condition in Pyongyang? Within the 36-square-meter replica apartment, we thematically inserted different content about the urban history of Pyongyang, about existing housing typologies in Pyongyang, and what are some of the imaginative new urban proposals for the city.
Calvin Chua: So in each of these rooms, you would find display items, artifacts, diagrams, drawings, or models. It is almost like going to an IKEA store, where you get to observe all these different real-life elements. But at the same time, if you observe carefully, you can get more information about the city – how the city is evolving, how the city is growing. We didn't do any urban planning in North Korea; we analyzed the cities and...
Dave Deek: So you actually did urban design or urban planning training in North Korea? Okay...
North Korean Urban Design: Aesthetics, Constraints, Juche Style
Calvin Chua: We also do training programs for some of their urban planners and policy makers.
Dave Deek: That is very interesting. Could you talk more about the unique context, especially in terms of how it affected your operations and the constraints of training these individuals?
Calvin Chua: I think the Koreans are very technically skilled, I would say. They use similar software: AutoCAD, Adobe suites, different 3D modeling software, GIS software. I think we all use the same kind; there's a certain commonality. If you put a caveat here – if you disregard the political ideology and all the rhetoric, if you just look at it from a purely people-to-people exchange – we would be able to communicate easily as professionals. We use the same platforms; we design things in a similar way.
Calvin Chua: But of course, the politics, the perception towards what a city should be, what it means to design a monumental street in North Korea is very different from say Singapore. So I would say the challenge is always to contextualize for them and introduce them to certain urban planning best practices and how they could actually translate it to their context. Not to say that because of censorship whatsoever, but rather, I think it's important that there has to be an applied learning point for them in this training. Yeah.
Dave Deek: Okay, let me clarify something. I do not mean the political stuff; that's boring. I am very fascinated more about the urban design planning, the thoughts, the aesthetics of the North Koreans themselves. Could you elaborate on that? Because you don't hear about that.
Calvin Chua: Yeah. So it's interesting because I think maybe I can respond to this in two parts. Firstly, if we talk about aesthetics, there is always a kind of aesthetic... If you look at 1960s buildings, they're all very brutalist. Buildings were all kind of monumental and made of concrete. So it's kind of an expression of its time and a political ideology at that point in history.
Calvin Chua: Then I guess in the case of North Korea, it's actually the Juche style, which is the style of the ideology of self-reliance. Because they have been hit by famine, hit by sanctions, there needs to be a high degree of self-reliance. The architecture that they opted for, the style, has to reflect ideology. But what that means is essentially that according to different leaders, there are different perceptions of how you actually represent this ideology because it's so abstract. In the 60s, it was concrete because that was the primary material available, and it was a means of expression.
Calvin Chua: So buildings were very gray in North Korea all the way up till the mid-2000s. Under Kim Jong-un, it became a very colorful city. I think it's also a way to project a certain level of modernity. You start to see buildings trying to take shape with curves. Some of their local architects studied overseas in Europe, so they are very exposed to some of the star architects. But there's a limitation to the kind of curves they could generate because steel is expensive, and it's difficult to clad buildings.
Calvin Chua: So they still have to rely on concrete as a primary material source for construction. Hence, the buildings are very chunky and massive with curves. So it looks super monumental – maybe it's meant to be intimidating, but it's also a function of the lack of materials or access to materials that results in the kind of architectural styles and aesthetics we see coming out of North Korea.
Calvin Chua: So, I find that to be quite fascinating. If you go visit an apartment, the walls are extremely thick because it's a 40-story tower, and the walls are all load-bearing because you can't use steel beams to have a lightweight kind of building.
Academic Research & Design Studios (Peripheries, Adaptation)
Dave Deek: My god, that is fascinating. We're running out of time. I do want to talk more about your research, especially your academic design studios. Could you go more into detail about that?
Calvin Chua: Yep. So I would say the academic design research is kind of in dialogue with my practice research also. I think there are several key interests. One is to speculate whether the periphery could be made productive. Increasingly, we're seeing a lot of these peripheries not as suburban or rural, but rather spaces just outside the urban area that are filled with new kinds of spatial products like urban farms, data centers, and so on.
Calvin Chua: We are very interested in looking at rethinking these peripheral zones or regions. So we worked in China, looking at the transformation of agricultural villages and how they can be made productive as they urbanize. We were looking at this transitional space, this peri-urban area between existing towns in Malaysia and the new high-speed rail station – how could this peripheral area be made productive? We're also looking at peripheral regions in the Korean peninsula, how that can be made productive. So that's one area of research/design studio that I teach in the university.
Calvin Chua: The other area has got to do with rethinking paradigms of adaptation – adaptive reuse of buildings and so on.
Adaptive Reuse: Comparing Models
Dave Deek: Last couple of questions here. From an urban design perspective, what lessons do you think we could take from adaptive reuse examples like Zeitz MOCAA and Tate Modern? I think Zeitz MOCAA is the African art museum; they actually turned this massive grain silo into an art museum. And Tate Modern is this power plant turned into a British museum. What lessons do you think we can take from that?
Calvin Chua: I think in your list of questions, you gave an example, the project in Japan, right? Where Karl Bengs... transforming kominka into... rejuvenating them...
Dave Deek: Yeah. Karl Bengs' kominka. Sorry. Yeah.
Calvin Chua: I think it's interesting that you mentioned MOCAA and Tate Modern because these projects are your typical conservation or adaptive reuse projects that require a lot of capital to conserve these buildings, adapt these buildings, and turn them into cultural institutions. These are landmark projects, and probably every city has one or a few of them.
Calvin Chua: Architecturally speaking, they're amazing. But I think what's more interesting is the other example, Karl Bengs, where the idea of adaptation has got to do with saving or potentially reviving the countryside in Japan – not just in Japan, but many other places around the world. That is starting to create this new real estate sector in Japan. So Karl Bengs is probably one of the early movers, the pioneers, but we are hearing more and more investors buying up properties in Japan's countryside, redeveloping them, turning them into Airbnbs.
Calvin Chua: I think that in itself is an economy, which is way more interesting than talking about Tate Modern and MOCAA, which is great design. But, I find revitalizing the Japanese countryside to be much more fascinating. What does it mean to have foreign capital flowing into Japan, for a country that is relatively homogeneous? And these real estate capitals of varying degrees – some are individuals, some are backed by private equity funds – what does that mean for the locals living there? Are we saving the community, or are we potentially displacing them? There's a kind of debate or tension there.
Calvin Chua: On one hand, Japan wants to revitalize the rural area, but on the other hand, how do we as potential foreign investors or designers do it responsibly? Yeah, and be part of the process? To me, that's way more interesting.
Dave Deek: Okay, that's fantastic. I thought more people would be interested in the other two, but I'm glad that you're taking Karl Bengs as the more interesting example.
Final Thoughts: Cautious Optimism
Dave Deek: I believe in Bengs' case, he didn't have that negative impact. He just applied more modern techniques to preserve a traditional architectural style and way of doing things. And in his case, you have more people moving back into the countryside – Japanese rather than foreigners. In some cases, towns have their first child born in years because of some of his work. Regarding foreign investors, it's too early to say, as you said.
Calvin Chua: Mhm. Yep. Sorry. Yeah.
Dave Deek: ...to say. And then, I don't want to keep you out too long. I also want to talk after the recording ends. So last thing for the record: as we conclude, any final thoughts for the future? Anything, your choice.
Calvin Chua: Yeah, I kind of view the future with a cautiously optimistic lens. That's a way of ensuring that we continue to be positive, I think, in light of all the things that are happening around the world – things that are more acute to things that are more chronic and systemic.
Calvin Chua: So on one hand, as much as we critique these problems, I think we need to have a certain optimism. Yeah. So to some extent, that's kind of how we operate. I think we are critical and cynical, but at the same time, optimistic.