Gardens By the Bay

The local answer to NY's Central Park and London's Hyde was launched here yesterday by the PM. It would be open to the public from 5 in the morning. (Sensibly, considering the midday sun, management assumed early morning and late evening patronage.)

Enhancing the tourist precinct on Marina Bay had nothing to do with the $1bil. investment on 101ha of land for the Gardens By the Bay project, the current PM Lee fille made that clear in yesterday's speech. The government might have turned a tidy profit on that prime site had it been so inclined and released the land to developers. No, the new gardens would be the green lungs for the city-state, "aiding emotional well-being and sense of belonging.”

Planted, orderly gardens essentially, with some notable added features and improvements of old, rather oppressive Mother Nature here in the tropics.

The Supertrees were the outstanding addition above all others. Eighteen there would be when the second and third segments of the Gardens were complete in a few years’ time.

Originally the intention had been to have thirty-six of the Supertrees; since that number had been halved. (A basement car-park below the Gardens had also been scotched.)

The Supertrees were tall, thin columns of concrete and steel; light-poles in essence that would act as trellises for creepers. Rather than the standard linear or dotted lights, those wrapping the Supertrees take the form of nature's fronds or webs—squiggly scribbles like a child's drawings.

Additions to the lights of the Flyer one side and on the other the marooned ship/launch-rocket/out-sized spear that sits atop the casino complex, the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort. On the equator there was nothing to compare. (Unless Dubai a couple thousand kilometres north.)

Supertrees were already a feature in another landmark global city in the region, Tokyo it may have been. Singapore had followed and possibly outdone the forerunner.

Lifts within a couple of the trees fetch up to fine dining restaurants, cafes, merchandise outlets, and also a 128 metre Skywalk.

 

The Supertrees that link the Skywalk stand 42m tall. Presumably the Skywalk stretches some distance below. The Skypool spanning the three towers of the MBS rose fifty metres above ground. From the photographs the Skywalk was appreciably lower. Swimmers splashing almost adjacent to power-walkers starting from 5AM.

It was on the OCBC (local bank) Skywalk, at the head of a long line of dignitaries, that the current PM was photographed yesterday.

On ground  within the greenery two Conservatories were sited that housed a treasure trove of botanica from other regions. This was another element in the ambitious project: conservation and education. The cooling for the Conservatories was to be powered by green waste treatment. (Singapore thought of itself as a leader in techno-eco innovation.)

Most Singaporeans had not visited Central and Hyde Parks, nor seen the exotic plants of temperate climes. The Conservatories would of course also provide welcome refuge for the nature lovers passing through the open air gardens in the heat.

Within the greenery on the ground terracotta, wooden and aluminium fauna has been inserted for treasure-hunting children—horses, elephants and crocodiles &etc. One of the pachyderms pictured had raised its trunk to spout a column of water across a virtual river upon a playmate on the opposite bank.

Luscious pink-flowered garden beds. Real trees with exposed roots—dimocarpus longani palms from Queensland; "drunken trees" from South America—ceiba chodatii. Rock pools housing colourful fish. A weathered rabbit in grey-blue granite with a hole for an eye might have been a touch macabre. (It recalled the inflated white bunny on the lawn in front of the Singapore Art Museum—SAM—on Bras Basah Road, a block behind the National Library, long a favourite site for photographers. One could be forgiven for thinking a part of the civic project in Singapore included the provision of new and enticing photographic platforms for those with quality cameras.)

In boardrooms within the towers of the city family-minded men and women continued to plot a resurgence of traditional communal values in the Republic, seeking means to restore bonds between people, between genders and generations, (a concerning fertility rate, especially for the Chinese), between the ethnic and social groups. Escalators riding hill-parks, well-maintained roadside greenery and flowers, Skywalks, Supertrees, the Conservatories—there has certainly been no want of endeavour.

 

 

 

 

 

2.

In the end it required a proper visit. The voices of nature-lovers had been raised at the Mr. T. T. tables. The Supertrees were more than light-poles, it was suggested. Cutting-edge technology from the little red dot was deployed up there. The towering concrete and steel champagne flutes were in fact trellises carrying greenery four and five storeys high that were the hope of natural insulation for housing towers. A screen of green of such and such thickness, trained over the surface of a housing block, could keep out the unforgiving, broiling tropical sun and lower the internal temp by so many degrees. It would look the part too. (Roof-top gardens, both for cooling from the top down and also water catchment, used for the loos etc., seem to be claimed by the little red dot of Singapore as a special advance of their own laboratories.) 

It did need to be investigated.  Grisly old defenders of the Republic had a point; summary judgments served no one's interest; down with summary judgments. The planets were luckily all in alignment on the morrow, a blessedly mild and cloudy day in this hottest month of the year.

An hour and a half did it. That was foot-slogging from the library, a decent turn of the place and jumping a bus Russian roulette style on the return. (Excellent public transport system in Singapore. Take your hat & coat against the aircon— a friendly tip.)

Resisting the tourist map, stumbling and bumbling managed it. The MBS signpost was more than adequate. Head toward the beached light-ship. Ahoy there! The only question was which side of the river or bay? (Artificial from memory the latter.)

Blunder by the Queen Liz Bridge commemorating her coronation was rather fitting at this time of the London Olympics and Diamond Jubilee. (All those prayers for safe-keeping from primary school not going unheard.) The big church, might be St. Andrews. More accurately, big lawn. The church, like all places of worship now, reduced to postage stamp size by the towers.

"... one of the most beautiful in Singapore... " the American voice of a guide from the double-decker going by.
         At first it looked like a polo field on the opposite side, the ring of impressive Victorian buildings facing suggestive. Perhaps the English played croquette there. 

The monument to Our Glorious Dead was another odd reminder of the Great War. (Someone said Afghanis herded from here to the Anatolian beaches to fight their co-religionists rebelled and had to be gunned down by the officers. Though that could not have been them buried there.) 

The Mandarin Oriental must have been five star, one could tell from the motor-entry. From behind on this pass the Durian building close-up. On the opposite side of the water the Lotus Flower. (Local monikers.) The latter pair were twinned opposite each other across the water: grotesquerie, or iconic architecture, as one pleased. 

An entirely dark-skinned work-gang laying hot bitumen was another reminder of history only a few generations past. But this wasn't getting us along the road to the south section of the Gardens By The Bay, opened just a few days ago and splashed across numerous world newspapers.

A writer needs to walk his talk. So said the senior writer at the Mr. T. T. tables the night previous. Well, this may not be the highlands of Kalimantan, Mr. Nameless So-and-so, but never-you-mind about that. Due diligence was duly done.

Not much to say about the gardens that wasn't said previously. Ordered. Tidy. Patterned. Perhaps too much of a Hollywood make-over one may have said had one wanted to carp. Commissioned factory art-work in the water-ways, in the rock gardens, along the pathways. Spots of colour everywhere in signage, advertising, notices, prompts that might have out-shone the less evocative powers of dowdy old mother Nat.

The green, ecological spin-offs? The specialists will judge better. Might it have replaced what percentage of natural forest and jungle? Does it bear thinking about?

The OCBC (local bank) Skywalk seemed less than enticing, especially since one knew well-heeled swimmers were getting ten times as big a treat in the neighbouring Skypool of the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort. Had the chaps up there wanted they could easily have peed on the poor forlorn hanging on the rails of the lower deck of the Supertree Skywalk. (Someone, a chap from a neighbouring country, or at least one in the region, in town to learn about the spectacular success of Singaporean urban planning and design, a mayor of Taipei, or a former mayor it might have been, made the point that the casino only composed 3% or 5% of the MBS. The remainder was art, culture and less fraught entertainment. The signs showed the way to theatres, conference halls, galleries and the hotel itself of course. Perhaps no need to fret about the perils of gaming given the countervailing.

What else? The heat. A downpour three hours previous didn't matter a rat's. En route a porky chap on a motor-cycle stopped at lights, a postie, was asked for the best access point. Flyovers went one way and another. Under-roads. Water obstacles. Chap had never heard of the Gardens. Stands to reason on what he earned. 

The plum-purple light poles afixed to a Supertree could be made out across the lanes of traffic. Poor postie pitied the foot-slogger with the seven or eight hundred metres in front of him. (Might have been a full kilometre given the up and down.)  

Coming from the city side, nature-lovers were funnelled across a bridge that passed through the casino. On a casual viewing moving at a fair clip, it was not possible to see the roulette wheels. Canny planners, you had to hand it to them, tying in nature and games of chance. A drink downstairs after nature in the heat seemed a fair lure. 

A good number of unhappy chappies trailed wives with cameras in the Gardens. One of the latter was heard berating the former, poor man fetching into his mid-seventies: I'll come alone next time! Little battery operated hand-held fans in yellows and greens were totted along the curly paths by a number of folk. There may have been a stall within the greenery that was missed.

The fridges housing the exotica of climes North and South where humans had clustered in times past—one was named Cloud Forest and the other Cuckoo Cavern from memory, something like that. They wanted $20 or $25 for that privilege. (The Skywalk was $5. Opposite the MBS Skypool was either $20 or $25. This for a walk around the perimeter fence watching the lucky swimmers and snorkelers and the bikini babes. To dip your toes in the wet started at $525 for a single-bed suite facing away from the water. Something like that. It might have been $450 off-season. Though of course it’s always summer in S’pore, so that might not be right. Anyhow. 

The thousand year olive that featured in the promotion appealed to a fellow with the Mediterranean in his blood. Even better to have seen them crane it in a few weeks ago before they lowered the fridge roof. 

In either Cuckoo Land or the Cloud there was a spectacular 60 foot waterfall that looked great in the pictures. That was the one the Straits Times reported as the jaw-dropper, causing the VIP crowd to go WOW!... (Now with YouTube in the offing probably as we speak, for nicks, you need to weight it up.)
         Were there no consequences for the human species, for civilisation, it would not be so bad. As mentioned, currently there were dozens, upon dozens, upon scores of civic luminaries from a hundred countries in town learning from the Singapore success story. Getting bright ideas. Family men and women planning for a cut of the action for their own home-towns. A pic in the paper showed Helen Clarke, former N.Z. PM — wasn't there a whisper she actually had some brains?—photographed smiling, clutching what looked like a toy koala in front of the iconic MBS, God help us.