A couple of months ago Joel Leong from HAYSTAKT interviewed me about the conceptual, design, and philosophical ideas that drove the development of the State of Buildings project. I cite my favourite building as Pearl Bank Apartments and towards the end of the interview, my brother nearly slapped me because I stupidly forgot that Tan Cheng Siong was the man behind it.

IF YOU COULD SUM IT UP, WHY WOULD SOMEONE COME TO YOUR SITE?

"We hope to appeal to people by giving them a takeaway - they get the information, pictures, and play around with the website - so there’s something that they can receive as much as we ask them to give. We know that we can’t just put out an empty canvas and expect people to contribute. Asking people to give - it’s a very sentimental and emotional thing, it’s very personal. On our part we need to keep abreast of what’s happening to certain places. On a basic level - not everybody reads the papers everyday so if we know of something we can tell people and they can have an emotional reaction to that."