Research on Places Chosen

• Macdonald House

Bombing which took place in 1965

MacDonald House At Present 
(2014)

General Info:

The MacDonald House is a historic building in Singapore, and is located at Orchard Road in the Museum Planning Area, Singapore's central business district. Initially built for a bank and it continues to function as a banking hall today, although it is more well known to be the site of a bombing attack in 1965 at the height of Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation.

What happened?

On March 10, 1965, at 3.07pm, a 11kg bomb blast ripped through MacDonald House.The bomb went off on the mezzanine floor. One of the lift doors was ripped out by the force of the blast. Hundreds of workers still at their desks on the upper levels of the building were ordered to evacuate the building. The explosion was so powerful that all the windows in buildings within a 100m radius of ground zero and the windscreens of almost all the vehicles in the carpark across the road were shattered, littering the area with broken glass.The cars in the Progress Motors showroom just beside MacDonald House were all damaged by the blast.

Why did this bombing happened?

Indonesia was against the formation of the Federation of Malaysia involving Singapore, Federation of Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak. Then-Indonesian President Sukarno saw the formation of Malaysia as an extension of British colonial rule over the region and embarked on a campaign of hostilities, including armed infiltration, to oppose it. That policy, known as Konfrontasi.  In Singapore, Indonesian saboteurs caused at least 42 explosions, the worst of which took place at MacDonald House. Singapore was part of the Federation of Malaysia from September 1963 to August 1965, when it became independent.

Presently:

The ten-storey building was put up on sale in 2002, and it was purchased by the successful bidder Tinifia Investment, paying S$36 million. The building was declared a national monument in 2003.

• Tangs Plaza

Picture of Tangs Plaza in the past

Tangs Plaza is the oldest home-bred department store in Singapore. Tangs was founded in 1932 by Tang Choon Keng, also known as CK Tang. Tang Choon Keng paved the way for the retail market, and was given credit for establishing Orchard Road as Singapore’s premier retail district. He bought a 1,351 square metres large piece of land, which faced the Tai San Ting Cemetery, at a price of $3.54 per square foot. He constructed the CK Tang Department store, then known as the House Of Tang at a hefty price of $50,000 in 1958. The House Of Tang had a roof with upturned corners and facade covered with green tiles, as well as red columnades and was modelled after the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City in Beijing.

In 1960, the House of Tang closed for a year due to a conflict with the Singapore Manual and Mercantile Workers’ Union. The store reopened a year later as CK Tang.

In 1975, Tang Choon Keng decided to demolish CK Tang to build a 33 storey hotel and a shopping complex. The hotel was called Dynasty Hotel, and was sold over to Marriott in 1995, and renamed to ‘Marriott Hotel”. The shopping complex opened in 1982, June, and had its name shortened to “Tangs”.

Tangs was also known for its policy of not opening on Sundays. This was due to the fact that Tang Choon Keng was a staunch Christian, and believed that Sundays was for going to church, hence implementing that policy. This policy, however, ceased to exist in July 1994.

• Plaza Singapura

Plaza Singapura is a contemporary shopping mall located along Orchard Road, Singapore. The mall is managed by Capital Land and owned by CapitaMall Trust. There are retail outlets over seven floors and two basements. The mall has a 752 lot seven storeycarpark at the rear of the building, and a two basement goods bay beneath it. Anchor tenants include Golden Village cinemas, John Little, Marks & Spencer, Best Denki, Spotlight and Yamaha. The mall is popular with families, teenagers and young adults. Now let me share with you the history of Plaza Singapura. Plaza Singapura was completed in 1974 and was designed by BEP Akitek Pte Ltd. At the time of completion, it was one of the largest malls in the island. The mall included a Yaohan department store and supermarket, which was opened on 14 September 1974, a Yamaha store and a Yaohan Best (now Best Denki) as its major tenants. The mall was then managed by DBS Land which is the predecessor of CapitaLand. There were three internal courtyards and an external forecourt provided psychological relief from the noise of traffic and commercial activity outside. Plaza Singapura was officially opened by then Minister for Finance, the late Mr Hon Sui Sen, on 16 August 1975.

• Paragon

As a commodity goods centre, it is perhaps axiomatic that the malls of Orchard Road have been subject to a host of design overhauls. Located at the geographical midpoint of Orchard Road, Paragon Shopping Centre has had a particularly active history of reconfiguration. Since the late 1990s alone, DP Architects has designed three phases of additions and alterations - in 1999, 2003, and 2009 - each re-establishing the mall’s relationship with Orchard Road by means of increasing levels of transparency, facade articulation, and circulatory connectivity.

Paragon is an upmarket shopping centre located along Orchard Road, Singapore, between Orchard MRT station, and Somerset MRT station. It was first designed by Kumpulan Senireka Sendirian Berhad, a Malaysian architectural firm, before undergoing redevelopment in the late 1990s, transforming into the modern, glass-covered building we know of today. It was opened in 1998 after its re-development. It is currently managed by SPH Retail Property Management Services, and owned by Orchard 290 Ltd. In 2008, 3 more floors were added to the building, thus making it from its previous 18-storeys, to the current 21-storeys high. Paragon houses 7 floors of retail services, with a total of 196 stores, with 4 being anchor tenant stores, and 14 storeys of medical services, thus gaining its reputation for being along Orchard Road.

With this series of developments, two adjacent existing structures have been joined and extensively refurbished to house a new concentration of premier fashion outlets along 115m of frontage, while a 14-storey tower has been added atop this podium to house medical offices supplementing the site’s adjacent hospital. The insertion of two atria – one within each existing structure - has established major activity spaces flanking the street. These dual spaces are connected by a wide corridor on every level; each extends vertically through the podium to connect all shopping levels visually and functionally, while spans of clerestory windows above flood the mall with natural daylight. All these factors strengthen the shopping centre’s openness and internal visibility.

The building’s frontage has been transformed with full glazing up to the fifth level, articulated by three glazed blocks projecting four metres beyond the original elevation line to augment transparency and internal exposure, showcasing the upmarket tenants - Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo, Prada, Tod’s, Miu Miu. An additional curved glazed entrance supported by a structural steel frame establishes a clear focal point for access. Articulated elements are projected from a unifying base façade of aluminum panels and fritted glass - drawing from the ‘Paragon’ namesake, these elements are patterned to reflect a multi-faceted diamond. With this formal and material composition, a clear architectural harmony is developed.

YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association

YMCA Building in the past

During the Japanese Occupation of Singapore from 1942 to 1945, all British YMCA administrators and staff were interned at Changi Prison. The YMCA building at Orchard Road was seized and turned into the interrogation and torture headquarters of the Japanese Kempeitai or secret military police. The Japanese installed five jail cells in the building and employed cruel methods of torture such as electric shock, water torture, violent beatings and starvation. War heroine Elizabeth Choy, a YMCA member accused of relaying messages to British internees, was imprisoned for a total of 193 days and tortured by electric shock, beatings and starvation. The YMCA building was regarded with fear due to the wartime activities of the Kempeitai.

The YMCA also served as a prison for people suspected of being anti-Japanese. Typically, prisoners were cramped into small cells and forced to be motionless and absolutely silent. Those arrested would be tortured for the purpose of extracting names of anti-Japanese accomplices from them; refusal to offer such names led to further punishment. Should a prisoner surrender under the torment, any person identified by him as a "subversive force" would be sentenced to death or imprisonment.

In more recent years, the YMCA has worked hard to establish itself as a charity. It has many volunteers and hosts a wide variety of activities for reaching out to the needy and less fortunate in Singapore. The organisation also has international exchange programmes allowing students to make a difference to the less fortunate overseas.