Architecture
The design itself was conceived by one of Singapore's most renown architects, Leong Swee Lim (1935-2002) of Swan and Maclaren Architects, whose design subsequently won first prize in an open design competition. The design of the structure has been one of Swee Lim's most famous and significant contributions towards the legacy of Singapore's architectural history. The architect's conception of the four identical pillars each 70m high, represents the shared experiences and unity of the four major races of Singapore - Chinese, Malay, Indian and other races. Henceforth the memorial is essentially one of Singapore's iconic landmarks of heritage that truly embraces the virtues of a multi-racial and cultural city, whose unity is inevitably one of the pillars for Singapore's modern day success, harmony and prosperity.
The memorial has also been affectionately described by some as resembling four giant chopsticks. Unseen to the eye, the remains of the unidentified war victims are buried beneath the monument and truly adds to the material significance of the structure whose history it represents.
Read more about this topic: Civilian War Memorial
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)
“I don’t think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)