El modelo λφ 4 bicomplejo

In November 1990, the URA announced that three bids had been received.34A local consortium, Cloisters Investments Pte Ltd, later known as CHIJMES Investment Pte Ltd, was awarded the tender. They had bid $26.8 million for the site, including the chapel.35 Their plans included demolishing and rebuilding the dormitory; constructing a ten-metre deep courtyard, and using the remainder of the site, other than the chapel, for shops and restaurants.

34

―Three bidders for CHIJ‖, Business Times, 9 November 1990.

165 A Conservation Consultant, Didier Reppelin, was engaged, and the work was overseen by the architectural firm Ong and Ong. Thirty-five thousand pieces of stained-glass were shipped to Belgium for restoration at the same workshop where they had been originally assembled.36 The restoration proved to be more expensive than initially thought. By the time the complex opened in 1996 as CHIJMES, 100 million Singapore dollars had been spent on its restoration and development.37

Architecturally, the restoration work won several awards: in 1997, the Aseanta Awards for Excellence – Best ASEAN Conservation Effort; also in 1997, the URA Architectural Heritage Award; in 1998, the 5th SIA Architectural Design Award – Conservation, and in 2002 a UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award.38 These awards point to a highly successful ‗adaptive re-use‘ of the site. The response of the public, particularly by previous CHIJ ‗old girls‘, was more mixed. A previous CHIJ student, Elsie Chia, who had been at the school from 1919 to 1929, was quoted in the Straits Times at the time of the CHIJMES opening in 1996 as saying, ‗it‘s much better than before. But I feel that nothing has changed because the spirit of the old chapel is here‘.39 _{Her concern about retaining the ‗spirit‘ of the chapel}

reflects the ongoing tension between adaptive reuse of buildings and the intangible memories and ‗feeling‘ of a place. This was important at the time to many Singaporeans and, as we shall see in the Chapter Eight discussion of the Chapel Party, it has remained an ongoing issue.

Honours student Oh Yam Chew surveyed and interviewed a small number of ‗old girls‘ in 1997–98.40 He concluded that the perspectives of the alumni studied ‗revealed general approval of state conservation efforts‘, although five of his respondents were ‗appalled‘ by the commercial use of the site.41 At the other end of what he described as ‗purist conservation perspectives‘, he quoted an ex-student who said:

I think that food and beverage outlets are the temples of today and I‘m glad that its open to the public in such an accessible way … I don‘t want the ‗spirit‘ to be

36 _{Meyers, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, 81.} 37

www.chijmes.com.sg/tourist_about.php, accessed 1 January 2014.

38 _{www.chijmes.com.sg/tourist_about.php, accessed 1 January 2014.} 39 _{Straits Times. quoted in Meyers, Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, 81.}

40 _{Oh Yam Chew, "Mission (im)possible : a study of CHIJMES and the Singapore Art Museum" (National}

University of Singapore, 1998), unpublished thesis. Oh surveyed 102 members of the public and CHIJ alumni, plus did 29 in-depth interviews of alumni of CHIJ and of the St Joseph‘s Institution.

166

preserved if it means that people are excluded (in) the process. We live in a post- modern age and such stuffiness should be done away with.42

In general, the alumni identified the target group for CHIJMES as ‗the young and trendy‘, yuppies, the well-off, the upper-middle class and the tertiary and English educated.43 One respondent said ‗the whole place reeks of snootiness … the valet parking all contribute to the snob appeal of the place‘.44 _{This suggests that the aim of targeting a ‗refined‘ user group may}

have been met, but may have operated as an impediment to its acceptance by ordinary Singaporeans. It is also at odds with the Convent practice of accepting all children left at the gate and, at least nominally, all potential students and worshippers. Kong has suggested that the best way to ‗make amends‘ with those persons still aggrieved by the relocation of the school and the subsequent commercialisation of the Convent site would be to involve them in the CHIJMES activities, and ‗in so doing, CHIJMES as a commercial enterprise stands to benefit while old wounds heal‘.45 She noted that some celebrations in 2004 for the 150th anniversary of CHIJ in Singapore were held at CHIJMES, and the Alumni Association has used the facilities for its commemorative dinners.46

In Chapter Eight I highlight the tenuous nature of this relationship as illustrated when the chapel was hired for a ‗Chapel Party‘ with ‗dancing nuns‘. The commercial nature of the complex now means that it is continually at risk of being seen as crassly exploiting the original religious function of the site or of changing it beyond recognition of its original use. The Hog‘s Breath Cafe, another food outlet (now closed) appeared incongruous next to the chapel and Caldwell House. At times the advertising of businesses and events draws on the original religious use, as in this (unattributed) publicity material from one of the CHIJMES food outlets: ‗Our first visitors came seeking spiritual nourishment. Nowadays it‘s the spaghetti marinara.‘47

The 2012 book Conserving Domesticity by architect Lilian Chee is a collection of photographs of buildings restored by the architectural firm, Ong and Ong, the same firm

42 _{Oh, Mission (im)possible, 106.} 43 _{Oh, Mission (im)possible, 117.} 44 _{Oh, Mission (im)possible, 117.}

45 _{Kong, Conserving the Past, Creating the Future, 204.} 46

Kong, Conserving the Past, Creating the Future, 204.

167 which undertook the restoration of the Convent and its transformation into CHIJMES.48 The book comprises chapters on eight shophouses and a bungalow, described as ‗old on the outside‘ and modern on the inside. Included among the shophouses and the bungalow – the domestic spaces – is a chapter on CHIJMES, with the focus almost wholly on the chapel. This initially seems an odd inclusion in a book which its back cover tells us is concerned with ‗the conserved domestic space … a space marked by the passing of time associated with occupancy – cycles of moving in, starting a family, growing old and dying‘. The book does not explain or justify the inclusion. Yet in many ways the Convent was a home and a domestic space. It was run by women; indeed it was a city of women and children, with a Mother Superior as its head. The absent father, the priest, visited as needed to lead the Mass. The Sisters, orphans and boarders lived there, ate and sewed there, and babies and toddlers played there. The decision by the Singapore government to take over the site and put it out to tender effectively moved it from the domestic to the commercial. Nonetheless, Chee‘s words, again at first reading seemingly more apt for houses than the Convent, also apply: ‗In each conserved house, a new past is being created, and this past is already transmuting itself into a new future.‘49

Conclusion

The decision by the Singapore government in 1990 to lease the site for commercial uses has meant that these tensions are inevitable, requiring careful handling. There were other ways that the restoration could have been approached, rather than tendering the site out to the private sector. For example, the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, Australia was established by the French order of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in the 1860s and was one of the largest self-sufficient Convent and farm complexes in Australia. It was vacated in the 1970s, other than for a small part retained by the Order and including the chapel.50 It was purchased by the Victorian State government in 1975 for use as a higher education institution, but in 1997 was earmarked to become a major residential development. The local community mobilised opposition and prevented this and it is now owned and run by a community trust as a community arts and crafts complex. It has a few small cafés and holds a Sunday market, but is not run as a commercial concern per se.

48 _{Lilian Chee, Conserving Domesticity (Novato, CA: Three Sixty Review, 2012), 004.} 49 _{Chee, Conserving Domesticity, 022.}

50

See www.abbotsfordconvent.com.au, accessed 15 January 2015 and http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov/#detail_places;1, accessed 2 January 2014.

168 I have shown that the tendering out of the CHIJ site was a very Singaporean response to urban redevelopment, reflecting the shift to an appreciation of heritage conservation as an important part of the fabric of the city-state, but also the view that it must be economically viable and not a drain on the state. Despite some opposition from CHIJ alumni and others, the tender was issued and the tender document which I have examined in detail portrayed both an idealised past and an idealised future for the Convent site. The site became, in effect, part of the government‘s pragmatic push towards economic development and the aim of transforming Singapore into a modern global city. In the next chapter, I examine more broadly how Singapore is representing and remembering its past through its designation of National Monuments and argue that such monuments are used to both define, and to serve, the nation.

169

Chapter 7