You wanted to be a filmmaker when you were young, but your father thought it was not a proper profession. How did you end up studying architecture?

Tan Kay Ngee (TKN): My father was a self-taught electrical engineer who looked after all the technical aspects of the cinemas owned by the Shaw Brothers. He was also involved in the renovation of these cinemas and perhaps because of that, he encouraged me to take up architecture. Although he didn’t fully support my ambition to make films, he suggested architecture as it’s the closest to art or film making. There was no local arts school in 1977, so I enrolled into the architecture school at the then University of Singapore, a forerunner of the National University of Singapore.

One of the first projects we were assigned by our lecturer Jack Tan was to design a float for the university’s Rag Day. While other students designed futuristic structures, I created a hand that could transform into a plant. Jack found it very interesting and chose it to represent the school. That’s when I realised architecture need not be mundane but can be expressive and used to tell a story. The more I got into the subject, the more I realised the range of possibilities and dimensions for interpretation in architecture. When it is built, architecture also represents a moment in time and continues influencing its surroundings and people who engage with it.

Years later, it became clearer to me that architecture work is similar to film making. Before starting on the drawing board, a narrative for each project can be established to suit the personality and needs of the client. The design brief can be very dry, but it’s up to us to delve in deeper to understand what those needs really are and shape them into a sequence of interesting spaces.

One design category you are known for is bookshops, specifically art and design retailer Page One, which your brother founded, and the Japanese chain Kinokuniya. What are some key design considerations you bring to such projects?

TKN: We started working on Kinokuniya in the 1990s because they were collaborating with Page One. Kinokuniya wanted a bookshop in Singapore that would attract the younger generation, so they took over a unit in Ngee Ann City. We began analysing why it did not work well for its previous occupant and brainstormed with the client what a good bookshop should have. Our design offered clear circulation paths and zones for books. Windows admitted natural light into the store and granted views out so visitors could relate to the outside world at all times. Being able to look out to greenery and sky proved to work as visitors stayed longer in the store, and they could also sense the gradually changing atmosphere of the interior.

Wherever we design a Kinokuniya bookshop, we study the culture and identity of its locale. If one looks carefully, both ends of the bookshelves for Kinokuniya are a modern interpretation of the yukata, a type of Japanese kimono. In our recent design for the new outlet in Bangkok, we used local wood as the main material for the bookshelves, matched with black, with touches of gold. The materiality and colour scheme relate to Thai culture. It’s very important that an international bookshop shows that it respects the local culture and is not trying to dominate it with a singular global identity.

Your works have been described as contemporary, innovative, and avant-garde. But over the last decade, you have also worked on several conservation projects including the Sultan Hotel (2008) and Gallop Extension (2021). How do we reconcile this interest in the past with your forward-looking works?

TKN: One of the cities that has impressed me the most is Rome. You could be in a palazzo that was built during the Renaissance period, where the architecture will bring you back to Roman times. But right next door could be a boutique selling you the latest fashion from Dolce&Gabbana or Armani. There are these multiple layers in the city. It’s the same for London. I recently ended up in a pub in Brick Lane that must be a hundred years old, and it brought me back to Charles Dickens’ time. After that, I walked to the Whitechapel Gallery, with all the recently built high-rises nearby. The diversity in the city felt almost like the set of

Another constant in your career has been writing. Since the age of 16, you’ve contributed articles to magazines and newspapers in Singapore and overseas. What has kept you going for so long and how might it have contributed to your architecture practice?

TKN: Writing is about recollecting and discovering my thoughts and feelings about things and spaces, which would otherwise disappear. The journey is always full of surprises. I vaguely know what something means to me, but it is not until I put it down on paper that I realise what it is all about.

When the editor of  Lianhe Zaobao approached me to pen a column for their newspaper about 15 years ago, I decided to start writing in a less academic manner to speak to general readers instead. In these fortnightly column essays, I was hoping to share the appreciation of good design and architecture, and question what makes a city tick.

In the 1990s, you were part of a team that revamped the architecture course in The Bartlett, University College London. You have regularly served as an external examiner to architecture schools and recently started teaching part-time at the School of Architecture in the National University of Singapore. What lessons do you hope to impart to future generations of architects?

TKN: I will first listen to them before sharing my views. Students are all smart individuals. You don’t have to impose or force a belief, aesthetic, or design approach. I enjoy it more if I can enlighten students to discover their own way of interpreting things. I often see possibilities in every single one of their proposals.

Other than being original and creative, students have to work hard too. New ideas need to be tried out over and over again. Architects are like scientists who experiment a lot. Some ideas may not work out immediately and some may not work at all, but the process of testing out is vitally important.

The other thing I often emphasise to students is the importance of editing and not holding on to too many ideas in one design.