Mum: Son, where are you now?
Son: I on Orchard
Mum: What are you doing there?
Son: Watching movie.
Mum: What movie did you watch?
Son: I-on Man.
Mum: Have you ironed your clothes?
Son: Yes I i-on already.
So the four of us – Ronghan, Thow, Miaohui and myself – are supposed to watch ‘Public Enemy’ but discover that it is difficult to get seats for the 6-plus-pm shows; the next shows take place at 9pm and that is a little too late for us because, by the time it finishes, we would all be running for the train. Or we might run and then miss it. And then we would have to cab home. You might probably suggest, ‘Take the Nightrider!’ Unfortunately meritocracy is not in the vocabulary of the bus companies and you don’t get twilight bus services to your area if it happens that, for one, SMRT (the company that operates the Nightrider) does not dispatch any of their buses to these areas in the first place. That includes areas where SBS Transit – the other major player in the provision of public bus services – dominates the supply of rail and bus services to your area.
Enough about trains and buses; anyway I shall finish the backdrop as to how we come to end up on Orchard Road and later Ion Orchard – wait, we are ON Orchard anyway. What I-ONIC-sense is this?
Right, to summarise once more before we move on properly: we are supposed to watch a movie entitled ‘Public Enemy’ but the cinema halls are not big enough to accommodate another four of us, so we decide to simply hang around and talk. (And I just realise this is a new chapter in the narration. Moving on…)
So we decide to check out the newly-opened Ion Orchard. Yes, the much-hyped Ion Orchard on Orchard Road.
Goodness, that place is like a clone of Palais Renaissance, which stands a little further up Orchard Road, next to the Thai Embassy. Enter the ground floor and you are greeted by shops with names that would put your tongue to shame in an oral examination. Seriously we could have a competition whereby the contestants would prattle off the names of shops found in Ion Orchard.
One of our observations tells us that this is the epitome of window-shopping. The reason being: the passageways are crowded but the stores are starkly empty…
We decide to check out the basement. There’s an express escalator that brings you all the way down to the lowest of the basement floors. As we descend through the underground atrium, we get a glimpse of the shops. Aahh, greater familiarity – shops we actually know whose names are pronounceable!
This building has become a metaphor of class: lower class on the lower levels; upper class bling-blings on the upper levels.
* * *
After a while, many buildings tend to resemble another on this same island.
Of late, several trends have sprouted on many recently-built commercial buildings – particularly those for shopping:
(a) Wordy glass facades – wordy because they are piled with the names of retail outlets that wish to get spotted from the outside.
(b) Lengthy exterior escalators. The exterior escalators of Orchard Central and Wisma Atria look similar – both, in turn, resemble the escalator layout on the Georges Pomidou Centre that hugs the façade of the building.
Above: Georges Pompidou Centre (Paris). Exterior escalators!
Above: Wisma Atria (Orchard) . Exterior escalator sliding underneath Food Republic.
Above: Orchard Central (Somerset). The diagonal structure that slices through the vertical plane of the facade is the escalator.
(c) Lighting mounted on exteriors: the lighting design on the façade of Orchard Central resembles that of Iluma (located across the road from Parco Bugis Junction), in that both employ remote-controlled lighting to produce shapes and patterns. Ion Orchard is bedecked with little white light bulbs that make it look like some diamond-encrusted mass (I cannot think of the right word to describe the physical manifestation of Ion Orchard – except it does resemble neither an ion nor iron. Or are those light bulbs meant to supposed to represent ions…?)
Above: Orchard Central (at Somerset)
Above: Iluma (at Bugis)
Above: ION Orchard
(d) Protruding structures: many buildings are trying to jut out onto the main Orchard corridor as much as possible. The Heeren is building a massive egg-like structure onto the pavement. Perhaps these are the new manifestations of the historical ‘five-foot-way’? According to a recent newspaper report about a makeover on Orchard, the management of Lucky Plaza is awaiting approval to build a ‘jut-out’ façade for its building as well.
So the façade of Orchard Central – I say the façade only – should probably receive the reputation of ‘great imitator’ for its similarities to other buildings that appeared before it.
Even the buildings are joining a so-called rat race with regards to design. Come on, developers need to open up and architects and designers should try something more fanciful! Quite obviously the buildings aren’t meant to be functional, they’re also flashy. So why not go for something even more outrageous, but really make it stand out rather than persuade Tweety-Bird-like thoughts of ‘I thought I saw… this kind of façade somewhere else…’
*All comments are sorely (no this is not a spelling mistake committed subconsciously or unconsciously…) mine. Comments are welcomed. Please refrain from the use of swear language though; that’s all I ask. Much thanks.
