“A story hidden in plain sight”: Exhibition charts landscape architects’ contributions to Singapore

SINGAPORE – The upcoming new public housing development in Pearl’s Hill will have a cascading water feature to manage stormwater during heavy downpours.

But around 1998, a similar water feature was completed in Bukit Panjang’s Pangshan Grove estate.

The 200m-long “dry stream”, which is wedged between public housing blocks, was designed by retired landscape architect Tay Bee Choo, and is the project that she remembers most fondly after a career that spanned more than four decades.

Ms Tay, 70, who retired recently after a 34 year-long stint with the Housing Board, said the project involved turning what would otherwise have been a concrete drain into a landscaped stream that mirrors one found in nature.

This, she said, was done by taking advantage of the 9m level difference between where the stream starts and ends, such that water cascades when there is heavy rain, making the stream both a drainage system and a beautifully landscaped water feature.

Ms Tay said the project encapsulates how landscape architecture is an art and a science, where “we do the sculpting of the land and we understand how nature acts when it rains – instead of draining everything into the longkang (Malay for drain), we created a landform for the residents to enjoy”.

She was one of five founding members of the Singapore Institute of Landscape Architects (SILA) in 1985, and the organisation on March 16 launched an exhibition showcasing the sector’s contributions to Singapore’s built environment in recent decades.

Ms Yvonne Tan, the institute’s current president, said that Ms Tay’s Bukit Panjang project was ahead of its time, coming before national water agency PUB’s Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters Programme, which was launched in 2006 and guides the design of many water features today.

She said the Bukit Panjang project was used as a case study when she studied landscape architecture as an undergraduate in the early 2000s, and that it has gone on to act as a reference for other projects – specifically ones with a level difference – such as in Plantation Village, a public housing project that Ms Tan worked on as a director at consultancy DP Green.

In a speech at the exhibition launch, Ms Tan said that the exhibition – held at The URA Centre in Maxwell Road and running until May 31 – “tells a story that is often hidden in plain sight, the story of how landscape architects have quietly contributed to Singapore transformation into one of the world’s greenest and most liveable cities”.

She cited, for instance, the work of Mr Otto Fung, who in 1972 became the first landscape architect employed by the Government when he took up a role in the Parks and Trees Unit of the Public Works Department.

Mr Fung, the first president of SILA, went on to contribute to the designs of East Coast Park and the approach and coastal roads for Changi Airport in the 1970s, with some of the plans he worked on on display at the exhibition.

Second Minister for National Development Indranee Rajah, who officiated the exhibition’s launch, said that the profession has “quietly, yet profoundly, shaped the Singapore that we know and love”.

She noted that SILA is exploring initiatives to recognise emerging talent in the sector, and expanding its outreach to primary and secondary school children.

To this end, Ms Tan, 52, who took over as SILA presidency in 2025, said one of her priorities is to build up the next generation of landscape architects.

She said that there are currently four generations of landscape architects in Singapore.

They are: the pioneer generation represented by Ms Tay and Mr Fung; the second generation which Ms Tan is part of – many from this generation obtained their degrees through a programme run in Singapore by New Zealand’s Lincoln University; the third generation who were the pioneer graduands from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Master of Landscape Architecture course that started in 2009, and a fourth generation that is now emerging.

Ms Tan noted that many landscape architects were trained overseas, with NUS taking in its first undergraduates majoring in landscape architecture in 2020.

Currently, she said, SILA has about 200 members – including student members – and that there are about 170 accredited landscape architects in Singapore.

On engaging primary school student, Ms Tan said: “A lot of kids in primary school, they are already asked what they want to be in the future.

“Often it’s the regular careers, and not what is the built environment, what is landscape architecture, and even what is an ecologist, so on and so forth. So we want the profession to be part of that conversation at an early stage.”