Ngoc Luu Ly Nguyen

03/2017

THE BUGIS CLUSTER1: A MOPHORGENETIC NARRATIVE

Singaporeans are familiar with Bugis Junction and its bustling back-alley pedestrian

shopping streets. While these streets appear to be an integral part of the Bugis Junction

complex, there are interesting stories to tell about their spatial morphogenesis. Their

controversial vibrancy in the 1970s partially stimulated their demolition and hence,

development of the shopping complex, which re-created the public memory of these streets.

This essay focuses on the morphogenesis of the Bugis cluster (including Bugis Street, Malay

Street, Malabar Street and Hylam Street) in streetscapes and land-use pattern to explore how

Singapore’s planning agency uses the transformation of the physical to rein in the social.

Figure 1 Maps of Towns and Environs in Singapore in 1887. Source: National Archives of
Singapore (NAS)

The Bugis cluster comprises of 4 streets, namely Bugis Street, Malay Street, Hylam

Street and Malabar Street. They are bounded by North Bridge Road to the south, Victoria

Road to the north and Middle Road and Rochore Road on either side (figure 1).

Before the colonial period, these streets were an extension of the Kampong Bugis

village, bounded by the North Bridge to the North, Beach Road to the South and Kallang

River to the West (figure 1). Therefore, although there were barely any materials on the built-

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The Bugis cluster, as I call it, includes Bugis Street, Malay Street, Malabar Street and Hylam Street

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environment on the street cluster, we can deduce that the typologies here would have been

similar to squatters in Kampong Bugis village. Furthermore, because the area was populated

by the Bugis seafarers from Indonesia, who used it only as a hinterland for trade, there might

not have been any serious efforts at building permanent settlements in Bugis area in

early1800s.

The 1878 Map of Singapore shows how the Bugis cluster was originally oriented.

Bugis Street and Malay Street ran parallel, connecting North Bridge Road with Victoria

Road, whereas Malabar Street and Hylam Street ran parallel with each other and

perpendicular to the other two streets (figure 2). The latter two ended into Bugis Street.

Figure 2 The Map of Singapore’s Towns and Environs 1956. Source: NAS

By the 1950s, Malabar Street was elongated and ended into Rochor Road. This

elongation of small streets like Malabar to create transport route towards main arteries like

Rochor Road suggests a possible increase in population and activities along the streets. A

greater volume of transportation was needed to create more connectivity with the larger city.

This street opening might have been done under the auspice of the British colonialists. The

streets were densely populated with shophouses as could be seen in Figure 2, each block

containing about 50 shophouses. They had uniformed dimensions, suggesting the existence of

buildings code regulations. These houses possessed narrowed frontage and were elongated,

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which indicates that the frontage might have been highly priced whereas the land inside was

cheaper. This was expected given the bustling businesses along these streets both day and

night as they were popular platforms for locals’ hawker centers and flourishing havens for

brothels and transvestites’ performances, serving the taste of Europeans (figure 3).

Figure 3 (Left to right) Transvestite Advertisement aimed at Westerners. Transvestite

performances. Crowds of locals eating at street-side hawker centers. Source: NAS

The street morphology stayed relatively stable until the 1985 Redevelopment Master

Plan, which brought about massive land acquisition and relocation of individual businesses

and hawker stalls along the streets (figure 4 and 5). Considering the rising trend of spatial

sanitization, from the clean-up of Kallang and Singapore River (1977), to the demolition of

old sand public playgrounds in favour of new hygienic modular ones (1980s), Bugis streets

could not have escaped this tide of spatial cleansing. Most of the hawker centers were

relocated to Lavender and satellite towns of Jurong East and West Coast, while landowners

were compensated for their land and the transvestites dispersed to other red-light districts

such as Geylang (Neoh Su May 1996: 47).

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Figure 4 1985 Redevelopment Master Plan Land-zoning and Legend. Source: NAS

Figure 5 Map of Singapore’s Central Area 2017 (Refer to figure 4 for pre-redevelopment
landscape). Source: openstreetmap

Malabar Street was truncated to make space for Bugis Junction mall, whose frontage

faced 3 major roads: North Bridge, Rochor and Victoria Road. While the general orientation of

the streets remained unchanged, their scale was largely shrunk. By 1990s, Hylam Street was no

longer connected to any major roads but lied completely within the Bugis Junction shopping

complex. Malabar Street, while still connected to Middle Road, ended abruptly in Malay Street.

A technical reason for this truncation was “traffic congestion along city roads, as well as the

connecting arterial” due to high “concentration of commercial activities” in the Central Area,

including North Bridge Road (Planning Department, Ministry of National Development 1985:

60). Thus, by severing connections between these smaller streets and the main arteries, the

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government could reduce traffic coming from them. Additionally, Bugis Street was empty of its

residential plots and enlarged into an open-air courtyard in front of the shopping mall (figure 6).

Figure 6 Bugis Street pre-demolition and Bugis Square nowadays

Contrary to the open streetscape of the past, the new streets have become “privatized”

public spaces. They were "upgraded" into air-conditioned pedestrian shopping streets, lined

with fixed vendors in carts, covered by glass roofs and guarded by closed gateways. The

spatial arrangement severely restricted the types of activities that could happen here.

Figure 7: Gated entrances to the present Hylam Street and Malay Street

Around two-third of shophouses was cleared in the construction of Bugis Junction

Shopping Center and the Intercontinental Hotel (figure 5). However, one-third of the

shophouses was preserved and restored to fit the surrounding sanitized landscape. While

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some of the characteristics of these shophouses still bear resemblance to the old ones, such as

the indented frontage, the five-foot ways for pedestrians and the standardized two-storey

typology, the second-floor décor is standardized with white paint and pastel window panes to

ensure a uniformly clean but dull look (figure 7).

While today these streets are still bustling with shoppers, their social character is

completely transformed following the spatial revamp. No longer exist the day-time street-side

individual businesses and the hawker vendors which derive their night-time vibrancy from the

salacious transvestites' performances and the flesh trade. Following the comprehensive land-use

redevelopment, Bugis streets have been turned into a teenager-targeted shopping complex with a

mix of in-house fashion stores, franchise outlets and local hipster street vendors, carefully

manicured to retain the old vibrancy without evoking the memory of the censored past. Despite

the benevolent attempt at preserving some shophouses of the old typology, they were brought

into a sanitized environment and hence, take on a new self-censored function. Their social

character is revamped to suit Singapore’s cleansed metropolitan image.

Figure 8 Shophouse designs, past and present

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Interestingly, in 2005, Singapore Tourism Board unveiled the new Bugis Street which

attempted to recreate the old Bugis Streets of the 1960s-1970s. It is located opposite the old

site, comprising a maze of alleys filled with vendors selling all kinds of products, attracting

tourists and locals who wish to experience an unusually chaotic Singapore. This move, while

selectively evoking the bustling commercial past, does not recall the unwanted salacious

history of Bugis Streets. Only within two decades, a comprehensive landscape redevelopment

has fundamentally ruled out the memory of the bustling vice trade, an entrenched social

character of Bugis Streets from the start of 1900s until ended abruptly in 1985.

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REFERENCE

1. Neoh, Sue May, and Brenda S. A. Yeoh. 1996. Heritage and enterprise in the making

of a consumption site in singapore: A case study of bugis junction and bugis village.

2. Singapore . Planning Dept. 1985. Report of survey: Revised master plan, 1985.

Singapore: The Department.

3. Lim, Rae Ruey Jing, and Maribeth Erb. 2010. Reading the signs of bugis street:

Constructing the 'new' bugis street as a utopic space.

WEBSITE

1. National Archives of Singapore. http://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/

2. OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org/