Definici´ on de Solvencia y Aceptabilidad

The tender was outlined in the URA document CHIJ: Renewing an Old Masterpiece. The document was issued in an envelope and opened out, with a central smaller insert showing the layout of each building. Figure 13a below shows the document partially opened. The front cover (silver) is on the far left and also opened out. The central section can be seen, with each of the buildings appearing as pink outlines; using this section, the reader could turn to the

17 _{Kong, Low & Yip, Convent Chronicles, 177.}

18 _{http://www.nhb.gov.sg/places/sites-and-monuments/national-monuments/former-convent-of-the-holy-infant-}

jesus-chapel-and-caldwell-house-now-chijmes, accessed 30 August 2015.

154 relevant building outline when viewing the corresponding pages of the main document. The right-hand page in Figure 14a is the first page of the tender brief, which appeared at the end of the document and stated the detailed conditions and requirements of the tender. Figure 14b below shows the body of the document.

Fig. 14a: Front cover (far left), unopened. Fig. 14b: Inside view

Source: All photos of the tender document in this chapter are by the author.

Note the use of photographs of the existing structures, many of which had deteriorated further in the seven years since the Convent was vacated. They are juxtaposed with artist impressions of possible future uses. Some pages also included line drawings of buildings and/or line drawings of imagined past uses. In Figure 15 below, various images of the chapel are overlaid.

155 The use of artist impressions on the same pages as photographs of the actual Convent buildings acts to render the buildings themselves part of the imagined past and imagined future. Here the past, present and future are meshed into a new ‗urban imaginary‘, which can potentially be realised by the successful tenderer. In a Singapore historiography that has always been linear – progressing steadily – this is a glimpse of a less linear view, although as I will show, the emphasis remains on the imagined future.

The document opens first to a large map of the civic district, the section headed ‗The Heart of the City‘. The text briefly reminds us of the ‗multitudes at the heart of Singapore (who) have lived and worked to the chimes of the bells‘, and of the thousands of girls who attended CHIJ. It then refers to the 1983 exodus of the Sisters and the relocation to Toa Payoh, happening when ‗it became evident that the facilities were inadequate for the growing student body‘. Facilities were becoming cramped and the noise from the surrounding streets was increasing, so this may have been a factor. Yet, the relocation was done at the initiative of the government and there was little scope for opposition to the plan. This hard reality was omitted, perhaps because it did not fit so well with the more romantic picture being painted. The text continues with the statement that the physical structures ‗continue to imbue the area with a graceful elegance‘, again a somewhat more idealistic picture than the reality of the increasingly deteriorating state of the buildings, which we can see in some of the photographs later in the document. It then notes that architectural experts regard it as ‗one of the world‘s last cloistered buildings still intact today‘, a statement that neglects to mention that some of the buildings on the site had already been demolished by the government and the area reduced in size. In other words, the walls of the last intact cloister were in fact already breached.

In the imagined future, the gates to the site will invite Singaporeans and tourists in to the new experience, as we see in Figure 16 below, titled ‗The Gate to a National Treasure‘.

156

Fig. 16: The Gate to a National Treasure

The gate in the line drawing is an embellished illustration of the most elaborate of the Convent gates at the time, the entrance to the St Nicholas Girls‘ School (the school itself having been demolished to make way for the MRT headquarters).20 The more utilitarian gate through which vehicles drove and which was known to many students as Sister Beatrice‘s gate, is not shown.21 Neither is the ‗Baby Gate‘, where the babies were left and through which they entered their new lives. Gates symbolically and practically signal an entrance, a liminal space between the outside and inside. They are a barrier if closed and an entrance when opened. In the case of ironwork gates such as this one, they allow a glimpse through into the interior. In the document, the gate is consistent with the imagined ambience being developed for the site – a grand entrance to the delights within. Whereas in the past, only those on CHIJ business entered, the renovated Convent site potentially allows everyone into a space previously unobtainable, moving it from the religious to the secular, and rendering the space public.

Throughout, the document draws heavily on a romanticised history of the Convent. Geographer David Lowenthal reminds us that all history is selectively recalled and that we

20

For a photograph of the gate, see Meyers, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus: 149.

157 accentuate aspects deemed ‗suitable‘.22 _{For Lowenthal, heritage modifies history, ‗drawing}

selectively and imprecisely from distant and generalised history to make for an intimate conflation of past with present‘.23 _{So the tender document draws on an idealised past for the}

Convent. In reference to the chapel, it suggests that ‗the colourful portraits of saints Paul, Thomas and others on the aisle windows have no doubt inspired students to greater academic heights especially during school examinations‘. In the courtyards, it reminisces that ‗school girls romped here during recess, playing basketball and ―Four Corners‖. It was not unusual for a nun walking down the corridor to stop short and say a prayer at the statue of Mother Mary within the shady pavilion‘. This serves to accentuate a past that is portrayed as simultaneously fragile (‗an irreplaceable aspect of Singapore heritage‘) and tangible (an ‗almost palpable atmosphere of devotion‘).

It is also a past that is inherently colonial. What sets Singapore apart from other former colonies is that its time of deeply felt angst was not the colonial period but rather its sudden expulsion from the Federation of Malaysia. As discussed earlier, the newly independent nation recognised Stamford Raffles as the founder of Singapore, effectively dating its birth from the arrival of British imperialism, a continued memorialisation of a British ‗founder‘, which Phillip Holden has argued is unique among post-colonial states.24 We are told in the tender document that CHIJ ‗needs no introduction to the community‘ and that ‗instant recognition and prestige have been its birth right‘ – the unwritten implication being that it is a familiar and prestigious landmark. Ien Ang and Jon Stratton have written that ‗it is impossible for Singapore to erase its derivative and artificial existence as a Western colonial construct – more than any other nation in the region, Western colonialism is inscribed in Singapore‘s very ontology‘.25 _{As I pointed out in previous chapters, this is a very different}

post-colonialism to many other nations. In the terms of Frantz Fanon‘s theories of decolonisation, Singapore is more akin to a situation where new elites replaced the British

22 _{David Lowenthal, "Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory," Geographical Review 65, no. 1}

(1975).

23

David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 139.

24 _{Philip Holden, "The Free Market's Second Coming; Monumentalising Raffles." Chap. 5 In Reading Culture:}

Textual Practices in Singapore, edited by Phyllis Chew and Anneliese Kramer-Dahl (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1999).

25

Ien Ang and Jon Stratton, "The Singapore Way of Multiculturalism: Western Concepts/Asian Cultures." Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 10, no. 1 (1995): 74.

158 elites, and colonial structures largely stayed in place.26 Here in the tender document, the past is decidedly colonial and the religious nature of the Convent lends it a genteel feel.

The present, represented by photographs of the Convent buildings, is minimal in the document, which is primarily about an imagined future for the site, yet which is also sensitive to its past. The photograph in Figure 17 below shows the courtyard, with the chapel on the right.

Fig. 17: The courtyard

With the site unoccupied since 1983, the buildings look run-down and neglected. We can see the overgrown grass and the generally bare and somewhat forlorn look of the site. The photograph, in effect, reinforces the ‗rightness‘ of restoration and sets the stage for the ‗renaissance‘ of the site through development.