Happiness, Prosperity and Progress for our Nation: Architecture for a Control Society

Control is not discipline. You do not confine people with a highway. But by making highways, you multiply the means of control. I am not saying this is the only aim of highways, but people can travel infinitely and ‘freely’ without being confined while being perfectly controlled. That is our future.¹

The thesis, titled, Happiness, Prosperity and Progress for our Nation, deploys a fictional and satirical political narrative. The author reimagines state power in Singapore in the year 2035 (seventy years after its independence). The proposition is aimed at disrupting the normalised decorum of urban residential life through the creation of a fictional neighbourhood called “Merdeka Estates”. It tries to integrate contemporary technologies such as smartphones and social media, as well as techniques of surveillance, drawing from Bentham’s and Foucault’s notions of panopticism and the panoptic gaze as a starting point. 

Each architectural exploration here pertains to a physical activity, i.e. buying, eating, playing, drinking, and reflecting. Each physical activity is, in turn, a response to a particular national narrative prevalent in Singapore, related to the country’s particular brand of nationalism, patriotism, and governance, so that the proposition as a whole permeates through the everyday lives of the fictional citizens of Merdeka Estates. 

Whilst the scheme is a seemingly utopian residential project promoting community bonding and security through smart technology, the project, in fact,  functions as a social commentary of state power in Singapore. The residential complex is, in fact, a dystopian complex of conservative control, veiled in a facade of technological advancement and community building. The scheme takes a satirical and “soft science-fiction” approach to critically analyse Singapore’s national identity and the Government’s role and panoptic presence in citizens’ daily lives. The resulting hyper-vigilant, hyper-conformist environment furthers the agenda of state intervention, control, and surveillance.