Architect Liu Thai Ker on the success of Singapore’s social housing experiments 40 years on

2024-05-28T20:26:00-04:00

Even though record prices on the secondary market have heightened anxiety about the rising costs of living in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive cities, public housing remains broadly affordable — at least for those who qualify for government subsidies to buy units. Today, close to 80 percent of Singapore’s residents live in public housing, and about 90 percent of the units are owned on a 99-year lease.

The architect of Singapore’s successful “social engineering” campaign after 1965, Liu Thai Ker, is a Malaysian-born Yale graduate and former understudy of I.M. Pei, who told the New York Times recently that he was “sad” to see the city-state’s current market dynamics affecting some of his democratizing designs from the 1980s.

Singapore has for years ranked alongside Vienna among the world’s leading cities for the development of social housing. The 86-year-old Liu continues his work as the Founding Chairman of the Singapore/Shanghai-based MORROW Architects + Planners, an entity he began in 2017 following the culmination of his 25-year run at RSP Architects Planners & Engineers.

At age 79, architect Liu Thai Ker is leaving RSP to start his own firm

2017-11-30T14:50:00-05:00

The new practice, Morrow, is named after the studio [Liu Thai Ker's] father, the pioneer artist Liu Kang, ran in the 1940s and 1950s. And though he joked that he was probably "the oldest man to start a company", Dr Liu stressed that he has no plans to retire soon and intends to work for as long as he can.

Age is just a number! Dubbed the “architect of modern Singapore”, 79-year-old Liu Thai Ker is leaving his Director position at RSP Architects Planners & Engineers to start his own practice, Morrow, which will open December 1.

Leading 40 employees (who are also coming from RSP), Liu Thai Ker “hopes his firm can help other cities to produce better plans, and also ‘architecture design that is not a direct copy of Western magazines’”, The Straits Times writes.

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Architect Liu Thai Ker on the success of Singapore’s social housing experiments 40 years on

At age 79, architect Liu Thai Ker is leaving RSP to start his own firm