Roaming Tales

By Caitlin Fitzsimmons

Singapore feels on first acquaintance like a tropical version of Legoland. Despite the steamy heat and Asian faces, it’s hard to escape the impression that we have been transported to the set of the Truman Show, that Jim Carrey movie where an entire city has been created for television.

Skyscrapers of chrome and glass dominate the downtown area, while apartment blocks and shopping and dining developments are plonked along the river in rainbow colours. The grittier side of urban life - crime, poverty, graffiti, litter - is conspicuously absent and, judging by the number of air-conditioned shopping malls and food courts, the most popular pastimes of Singaporeans seem to be shopping and eating.

The Singapore experience starts even before you leave the airport. Changi International Airport could be Singapore in miniature, with shops, spa facilities, a movie theatre and swimming pool and themed gardens catering to every taste, whether for orchids or cactus.

When we tell this to Niko von Saurma, a designer from Munich who has made his home in Singapore for two years, he laughs and promises to show us a very different side to the city. Niko is director of the Singapore Studio of BMW Designworks, which designs not just cars but a wide range of products including coffee machines and luxury yachts.

We meet at his office tower at Harbourfront, where he explains that the company chose Singapore not just for commercial reasons but also because of its diverse culture and thriving art scene. “A lot of people ask why we don’t go to China, which is such a growing market, but we are not interested in China but Asia and that includes India, Thailand, Japan, and so on,” Niko says. “If we were in China we would only get the view of China but in Singapore the population is Chinese and also Malay and Indian.”

As part of his job, Niko drives a different BMW every six months. Since the German stands nearly two metres tall - 197cm or 6′ 6” to be precise - and has a young family, I am expecting something quite roomy. Instead he leads us to an electric blue Mini. It’s so small his legs are at a 45 degree angle when he drives but it’s also the perfect car for zipping around town and squeezing into tight parking spaces.

Niko’s enthusiasm for his adopted home is obvious. On the personal side its a very safe city with good facilities, not just shopping and dining but also reliable public transport and plenty of parks. “It’s so green when you look on Google Earth that you almost can’t see that there’s a city there”, Niko tells us - and when I check later I can see what he means.

This is not the first time the Bavarian has lived abroad - he also spent several years working for Designworks in Los Angeles - but it’s the first time he’s lived in Asia and he is clearly thriving. Niko is off to Phuket for the weekend with his family and he concedes that lure of being able to go to Phuket or Bali for the weekend is an attraction for staff - but is at pains to add that everyone is of course working very hard.

The photographer and I are sticky with the heat and humidity but Niko remains cool and collected. He has clearly acclimatised as when I ask how he finds the heat he declares today’s weather to be “lovely and cool with a nice breeze”.

Niko wants to show us Singapore’s artistic and cultural side and showcase the ethnic diversity that he finds such an inspiration in his work. First stop is the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, in Robertson Quay. The facade is an old Chinese shop front with distinctive shuttered windows, but inside it’s completely new. Artists come here from all over Asia to spend a month in residency learning print making, using the paper made by hand on the premises. The resulting work is exhibited in the public gallery upstairs at the end of their stay.

When we visit, there is a retrospective exhibition by Malaysian artist Ahmad Zakii Anwar, featuring not just the prints from his residency in 2005 but also paintings and drawings. The art is rich and striking, particularly the images of people, from the elegance of the traditional South-East Asian dancers to the intense gaze of a man with jug ears. Niko exclaims with enthusiasm - “wow, this is really powerful” - and confides that whenever he comes here, he wants to buy everything in sight. Since BMW is one of the institute’s corporate sponsors, he easily charms the attendant into taking us to the backroom to visit his favourite works, currently in storage. He shows us a series of works by Chinese artist Lin Tian Mao, who was in residency at the institute in August 2006.

The pieces are completely white but the artist started working with the paper when it was still wet, adding foreign elements such as string and styrofoam balls into the paper pulp. “This I thought was very surprising and powerful because it has a lot of different layers,” Niko says, pointing to one. “From here you see all the structure of the paper and from far away you only see the face but when you come close it goes away, so you have the different layers of perception.” He adds that this approach has parallels to his work, especially for car design.

Back in the car, he points out Singapore’s most famous landmark, the Raffles Hotel, named for Stamford Raffles, the British civil servant who founded the city of Singapore. We also pass by the National Museum of Singapore, the Singapore Art Museum and the Asian Civilisations Museum. He says they are all worth a visit but he finds the Asian Civilisations Museum particularly inspiring. We take his advice and visit later to see well-laid out galleries brimming with fabulous historical art works from all over Asia, with a special emphasis on South-East Asia.

But Niko isn’t just talking about the batiks and Buddhas on display, he is equally delighted by the design of the museum’s electronic information kiosks, which show an image of a person looking around doing nothing who springs to life and attention when you touch the screen. He even draws inspiration from the Singapore’s parking vouchers - tickets that you buy in the convenience store, then punch out the correct date and time with the car key and display it in the windscreen.

We pull into Arab Street, a street filled with fabric stores and tailor shops. I wonder momentarily whether this stop will be a little ho hum, something to tick the box of ethnic diversity rather than a true Singapore secret, but Niko guides us expertly one street over to Haji Lane. This back street runs parallel to Arab Street but its character is completely different, with an assortment of funky boutiques selling clothing, home wares and gifts. Niko reveals that he did most of his Christmas shopping for his wife on this street - but adds that he also visits it to keep abreast with design trends and ideas. We venture into Salad, a store that specialises in selling beautiful objects - from jewellery to zebra ornaments - exclusively in black and white. This shop is a new discovery for Niko and that’s part of the charm of Haji Lane - the malls of Orchard Road have a wider range but they lack a certain romance.

Just a few streets away is Little India, which is a great place to come for food or a drink - though Niko reveals his favourite Indian restaurant is actually Sam’s Curry on the other side of town. There is a small Hindu temple, but it turns out there is a bigger one sited, incongruously, in Chinatown, showing how the areas of Singapore have changed their character over the years. The Mini pulls up at Mustafa, which sounds like the name of a character in the Lion King but is actually a department store in the heart of Little India.

Inside, it’s chaotic. The product displays are crammed from floor to ceiling, the medicines are next to the costume jewellery and the car accessories next to the books. Despite the mess Niko comes here to shop with his family, since it sells everything he needs - including German chocolate. Typically, it is also a source of design inspiration. “In Europe you would have a big sign and then about three items, but here it’s just everywhere,” Niko says. “It gives me me an insight into how people deal with visual information, about sound and smell, and here in Asia they are very often bombarded with information, so it’s interesting how they filter, what is relevant to them and what is not relevant to them.”

We continue to Chinatown, arguably the cultural heart of Singapore, renowned for its street market, its restaurants and food stalls, and the beautiful Buddhist and Confucian temples. At the hawker market Niko finds his favourite, the pepper crab, is not available but he contents himself with some make-your-own laksa and a glass of sugar cane juice. Singaporeans take their food as seriously as the French and Niko is enjoying the immersion into the culture, even taking cooking classes with his wife. “Eating plays an incredible role here in Singapore and it doesn’t matter where you go to, the food is always excellent,” he says. “It’s interesting to watch people use ingredients and spices completely differently. It expresses a lot about the culture how they deal with their food.”

Our hunger abated, we walk through the streets of Chinatown, pausing at a “pharmacy” with piles of dried starfish, stingray and sea horses on display. Although the city skyline is visible just a few blocks away, here the old Chinese shop fronts are lovingly preserved and the area has become somewhat of a Mecca for design agencies and other creative industries. Around the corner is Vincent Lee’s Dragon Red store, where Niko bought furniture for his home. The shop is packed with beautiful tables, shelves and dressers in dark woods with an oriental feel, all at prices far below what you would pay in Europe or North America. Niko greets the shopkeeper with a confident “ni hao” for hello. “This is my friend,” he says, introducing Vincent to us, who seems surprised and happy to find people taking photos of his shop. At the back of the shop is a big wooden chest of drawers decorated with a floral design that Niko wants to buy for his parents in law, declaring that it has a “Bavarian Bauhaus touch” to it.

Chinatown is also home to two more Singaporean secrets. We pay a quick visit to the Red Dot Museum, a museum showcasing design and particularly winners of the prestigious Red Dot awards. Niko tells us proudly that Designworks won several awards last year, including one for a ’sustainable trash can’ that compacts plastic PET bottles. The other surprise is the stylish New Majestic Hotel, a boutique hotel with a “seriously good” Chinese restaurant. The hotel retains the facade of the existing colonial buildings from the 1920s but it has been renovated inside with five Singaporean guest designers taking charge of different parts of the hotel and the work of local artists on display in the guest rooms.

As we drive back to his office at sunset, the Truman Show now seems very distant. For us, Singapore has suddenly sprung into reality with all the cultural richness and diversity of a real, living city.

This article was first published in Anyway magazine in September 2007. Copyright to text and images held by Caitlin Fitzsimmons and all rights reserved.

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