Unmasking the city hall facade a study of its visuality in images 3

CHAPTER 3

Masking:
A Revealing Veil


We can never understand a picture unless we grasp the ways in which it shows what
cannot be seen. One thing that cannot be seen in a… picture, which tends to conceal
itself, is precisely its own artificiality.1

By interrogating the visuality of the City Hall façade in images, and studying its
formal properties as symptoms of larger social, cultural and historical processes at
work, the invisible is made visible, and the unseen revealed. Through the myriad
changes in its visuality, the image of the City Hall façade has been utilized by various
stakeholders – government agencies, local and international artists, private individuals
– since its inception to serve their own, varied objectives.

Depending on the perspective adopted, the City Hall façade can be viewed as the
image of progressive governance, historical continuity and political inclusivity, or that
of exploitative political practices, historical discontinuity, and the hegemony of the
postcolonial government. But most of all, the City Hall façade is an image of
authority. Its use as the political nexus of the colonial and postcolonial Singapore,
coupled with its strict classical geometry, exudes a monumentality and fixity that has
ensured the longevity of its image in the nation’s imagination.

Besides its classical architectural form, one of the factors that has enabled the façade
to remain pertinent despite changes in political climate and administrations over the
eight decades since its inception is its propagation as an image. It is only as an image
that the façade can undergo multiple transformations in its visuality. To return to Le
Corbusier’s metaphor of the façade as clothing, changes in appearances, like dressing,

1

W.J.T. Mitchell. What Do Pictures Want?: The Loves and Lives of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, c2005) p.343.

204


are a way of negotiating different social circumstances.2 As signpost, stageset, and
billboard, the myriad visualities of the City Hall façade assume different functions to
fulfill the evolving political agendas in the colonial and postcolonial periods through
the propagation of various meanings.

It is also the representational realm that has elevated the City Hall façade from a
visual motif to political symbol. As Beatriz Colomina notes, “All the monumental
force of architecture is generated by the most insubstantial means.”3 For Colomina, it
is through the dissemination of architectural images in mass media that modern
architecture is endowed with a visibility that ennobles and immortalizes it. Similarly,
in the passage from visual motif to symbol, it is through the replication and
dissemination of its image that the façade has acquired a public visibility, and an
established significance. Although Colomina’s observation pertains to the analysis of
modern architecture, the same can be said for City Hall. It is through the circulation of
the façade’s image through various media such as postcards, monetary notes, film,
and artistic intervention that it has become one of the most prominent historical
building and political symbol in Singapore.

For Colomina, the architectural image function not only as a vehicle for the
expression and propagation of architectural concepts and ideals. It is also a reflection
of, or commentary on the cultural and social conditions of its production. And to
Mitchell, the image is both instrument and agency. To him, embedded within images

are ideas that serve the interest of those in power. And the City Hall façade functions
as both. The changes in its visuality are a reflection of the underlying political, social,
2

For an elaboration of Le Corbusier’s metaphor of façade as clothing, please refer to Chapter 1.
Beatriz Colomina. “Media as Modern Architecture,” in Anthony Vidler (ed.). Architecture Between Spectacle
and Use (New York: Yale University Press, 2008), p.72.
3

205


and cultural concerns of the state and non-state actors over time. At the same time, the
propagation of its image is also used to achieve strategic political and social agendas.

In addition to the nature of images posited by Colomina and Mitchell, the
representations of the City Hall façade also serve as a site of resistance and
subversion. For the analysis of its visuality also yields competing assertions.
Documenting a divergence between the use of the visuality of the façade by artists,
government agencies and private individuals, the image, which endows the City Hall
façade with its potency, also proves paradoxically to be its undoing. Reflexive in
nature, images reveal the traces of their own constructions. By interrogating the
images, established symbolisms of the façade are contested. The visuality of the
façade yields a depth of secret desires and hidden motivations. The profundity of the
façade will only increase, as its visuality continues to evolve over time to suit
evolving political objectives.

While W.J.T. Mitchell posits that a picture conceals its own artificiality, he also
forwards that the same image “shows what cannot be seen”. And this is true of the
images of the City Hall façade, where both its manifest and latent meanings can be

derived from its formal properties in the same picture.4 Dialectically, the unseeable is
present in the seeable, and the visible eventually yields the invisible. The image which
veils proves to be its own unveiling. However, while the term “unveiling” or
“unmasking” is typically used to imply the presence of a face, or an authentic core
beneath, there is no end to the unraveling of the City Hall façade. With multiple
permutations to its image, each of its visualities yields several interpretations, each as
4

For a further elaboration of manifest and latent meanings, please refer to the write up on obvious and disguised
symbolism as conceived by Erwin Panofsky in Chapter 1.

206


valid as another. There is no authenticity to be uncovered behind the artificiality of
the image. One only encounters an endless stratum of mask upon mask, veil upon
veil. The image of the City Hall façade is endlessly superficial.

But even so, the reflexive nature of images justifies the study of the City Hall façade
as an image. Like a neurotic syndrome, the image reveals in the process of
concealing. It is a revealing veil that unravels the seams of carefully crafted facades to
make visible the hidden scripts behind, disclosing what an analysis of the physical
architectural object will not yield.

207


APPENDIX A
IMAGING
Issue of postcard titled “Supreme

Court and Municipal Building,
Singapore”
Issue of postcard titled
“Municipal Building, Singapore”

1913

1920

Proposal to construct a
building to house the
expanded municipality

1926

Construction of
Municipal Building
commences

G.R.K. Mugliston porposal for
re-construction of civic centre;
Set up of committee to study plans for
design and construction of Municipal
Building

EVENTS

1929

1931

1934 1936

Celebration of first
King’s Birthday
parade

Completion of
Municipal Building

1937 1939

Celebration of King
George VI’s
Coronation

Celebration of King
George V’s Silver
Jubilee

1942

1945

1959

Victory parade to
commenmorate
surrender of Japanese

Municipal Building
taken over by the
Japanese

1963

Announcement of
independence
through merger by
Lee Kuan Yew

Announcement of
self-government by
Lee Kuan Yew


APPENDIX A
IMAGING
Presentation of For Singapore
and Signs of Memory at the
Singapore Biennale

Issue of $1 “bird” series
monetary note
Issue of $50 “orchid” series
monetary note

1966

1972

Issue of $10000 “ship” series
monetary note

1976

1987

First National Day Parade
held at National Stadium

First National Day
Parade held at Padang

EVENTS

1989

2005

2006

City Hall vacated by Academy of Law;
Building announced to be turned into a
national art museum

Administrative function of City Hall abolished;
Annexed by Supreme Court to accomodate
Academy of Law

Commissioning of
9th August by the National
Museum of Singapore

2007

2014

2008

Appoinrment of Studio Milou
as architect for the NAG

Lanching of architectural
competition for National Art
Gallery (NAG)

Opening of NAG


APPENDIX B

Year
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972

1973
1974
1975

National Day Parade - Sites
Centralized Parades
Decentralized Parades
Padang
National
Marina
As stated
Stadium
Bay
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
Jurong Sports Complex, Queenstown Sports
Complex, Toa Payoh Sports Complex, Jalan
Besar Stadium, Bukit Panjang parade centre,
Redhill Road parade centre, Haig Road parade
centre, Paya Lebar parade centre, Parry
Secondary School centre, old Raffles
Institution

1976

!
!
Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports
Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa
Payoh Sports Stadium, Temasek Junior
College, Tiong Bahru Secondary School

1977
1978

!
!
Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports
Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa
Payoh Sports Stadium, Temasek Junior
College, Delta

1979
1980

!
!
Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports
Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa
Payoh Sports Stadium, Temasek Junior College

1981

1982

!
!
Jurong Sports Stadium, Jalan Besar Sports
Stadium, Queenstown Sports Stadium, Toa
Payoh Sports Stadium, Bedok Stadium, Ang
Mo Kio Secondary School

1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989

!
!
!
!
!
!


1990
1991
1992
1993
1994

1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005

!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!

!

Marina South, Jurong East, Tampines, Yishun

2006
2007
2008
2009
2010

!
!
!
!


APPENDIX C

Series

Features
Denomination

Infrastructure

$1

Buildings

Landscapes

HDB flats

$5

Singapore River

$10
Orchid

Clasped hands
Singapore seafront and

$50

Clifford Pier

$100

Bird

Singapore waterfront

$500

City Hall

$1000

Victoria Theatre

$10000

Istana

$1

City Hall

$5

Harbor

$10
$20
$50

Miscellaneous

HDB flats
Changi Airport
School band
on parade


Dancers of
$100

various ethnic
groups

$500

Oil refinery

$1000

Container terminal

$10000
Ship

$1

Singapore River
Sentosa satellite earth
station
Chingay

$2
$5

procession
PSA container terminal

$10
$50
$100

HDB flats
Benjamin Sheares
Bridge

Changi Airport
Members of

$500

Armed Forces
and Civil
Defence Force


$1000
$10000

Ship repair yard
City Hall
Old Raffles Institution,

$2

Victoria Bridge School,
College of Medicine
Singapore Botanic

$5

Gardens
Sports

$10

Portraits

activities
Ethnic musical

$50

instruments
Uniformed

$100
$1000

youth groups
Istana, Parliament
House, Supreme Court
Research

$10000

scientist
working in
laboratory



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