Padang:
Field, Park, Beach?

The Padang is a space charged with civic significance.

Occupying the heart of the city, the expansive open space bears an ambiguous relationship to the average Singaporean. Against the backdrop of national judicial centres, the Padang communicates grandeur and sobriety. Only national festivities of the grandest scale warrant occupancy of this site, and that only at specific times of the year.

But what is the Padang exactly? And how has this city shaped its citizens as they have circumvented, trespassed, or lingered here? 

Fragment of a Shoreline is an opportunity to re-form our impressions of this central space of our city. By resurrecting Singapore’s colonial shorefront against a modern urban backdrop, publicness is re-created.