Arts centre to open in Bartley Road by 2028

SINGAPORE – Residents in the Bidadari, Upper Paya Lebar and Bartley areas will have a new cultural centre near their homes in 2028, on the premises of Ramakrishna Mission Singapore.

Though the Hindu organisation is building the centre dedicated to the arts to mark the centenary of its founding in Singapore in August 1928, the centre will be open to groups of all ethnic backgrounds.

“We want to be a bridge for different communities,” said Swami Samachittananda, president of the organisation, which is a branch of the Ramakrishna Order of India, a worldwide Hindu spiritual and welfare organisation.

“Everybody knows this is a Hindu organisation, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t allow a Chinese opera troupe or Malay dance group to come and perform – we are open, and we want to bridge groups as far as possible.”

The centre was born out of two considerations that the mission’s advisory committee deliberated – how to celebrate its centenary meaningfully, and how to better use a field on the mission’s grounds that has been vacant for decades, said Swami Samachittananda in an interview with The Straits Times.

The mission has owned the land in Bartley Road that it sits on since the early 1940s, when it bought a plot of land with the intention of building a residential school for boys. Eventually, a boys’ orphanage was built instead to meet needs amid World War II.

Today, the mission’s grounds – which span an area of about 2.4ha, equivalent in size to more than three football fields – currently comprise a field and several buildings. These include three conserved buildings that were built between the 1940s and 1960s – a boys’ home, a temple and an administrative block – as well as a kindergarten and a counselling centre.

While the field is used by children from the kindergarten and the boys’ home, Swami Samachittananda said it can be utilised more effectively.

“So, we thought of giving Singapore something new… We wanted to serve Singapore with a new direction in the line of art and culture,” he said, adding that the mission has noticed a lack of Indian organisations dedicated to the arts in the vicinity.

The centre – to be named Vivekananda Cultural Centre after the founder of the mission – will be designed by Yume Architects, a Singapore-based firm that won a design competition organised by Ramakrishna Mission Singapore and the Singapore Institute of Architects.

Yume Architects director Jason Lim said his team’s design and layout for the centre took inspiration from Ramakrishna Mission’s twin pillars of spiritual growth and service to humanity.

Spiritual growth and self-awareness are represented by a zone at one end of the centre focusing on the “self”, where a meditation hall is located.

Community outreach is embodied in a zone focusing on the “collective”, where the auditorium, art gallery and activity rooms are situated.

The two zones are linked by a concrete canopy over an open-air multi-purpose hall.

Principal architect Asami Takahashi said the design team researched Indian and Mughal architecture, especially temples.

Some elements of such architecture were adapted in the design, such as columns inspired by those found in Mughal temples, and walls of the meditation hall that are an interpretation of jali, or perforated screens common in traditional Indian architecture.

On a visit to the site, said Ms Asami, the team noticed children playing on the field, and decided to retain part of it in their scheme.

Two trees that “punch” through the concrete canopy in the centre of the building pay homage to architect Sverre Fehn’s Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which was built in 1962 and features trees that grow through the pavilion’s roof.

“It’s nice to grow a tree along with the new building, such that it becomes part of the heritage of the building,” said Yume Architects’ Dr Lim.

Architect Ashvinkumar Kantilal, group chief executive of architectural and urban planning firm Ong&Ong, was part of a five-member jury for the design competition.

He said Yume Architects’ sensitivity to the three conserved buildings on the site stood out to the jury as its design maintains the view of the buildings from Bartley Road, rather than obstructing it in any way.

The winning scheme was also respectful of the existing trees on site, especially one that is believed to be more than a century old, said Mr Ashvinkumar, who is serving as the project’s technical adviser on a pro bono basis.

He added that a key consideration for the jury was whether the winning design could fit within the mission’s construction budget and desired timeline, with the building slated to be officially opened in August 2028. The building is expected to cost $12 million, including construction, fitting out and professional fees.

It was Mr Ashvinkumar, a past president of the Singapore Institute of Architects, who proposed holding a design competition for the new centre to Swami Samachittananda. He felt the project was the right scale to bring out proposals from younger architects and emerging firms.

Architect Wong Ker How, second vice-president of the Singapore Institute of Architects and co-chair of the institute’s design competitions committee, said such competitions, which typically keep the participants anonymous to the jury, allow architects to “compete on design skills without the baggage of track records”.

He said that the institute is in talks with public agencies to organise more such competitions. Others that are in the pipeline for later in 2026 include one for a waterfront park along the Kallang River and another for a pedestrian mall in Katong-Joo Chiat.