Between having style and being stylistic

Being stylistic is easy, but having style is not.

It seems that architecture in Singapore is becoming more and more stylistic. Somehow, most architects and interior designers are getting crazy about patterns and randomness. Plain walls must be adorned. Feature walls, feature walls, feature walls... if not that, it's bling -  from lights to furniture to wall paper.

Some buildings are so adorned with patterns that spatial planning becomes a slave to graphic exercise. And it's not just the commercial building, even the residential buildings are looking like x'mas presents.

It's pretty puzzling that some 'iconic' residential buildings are actually celebrated for very superficial aspects like green walls, feature cladding/ pattern, building proportion and structural gymnastics. These get so overpowering that they masquerade the miserable tiny homes that we are getting. Perhaps all these adornments serve their purpose.

And I know it's not entirely the architect's fault. Clients are pushing and squeezing everything they can to get the value for each cent they put in. Almost every condo now looks uncannily similar in planning, designing residential buildings now becomes a dressing-up excercise. How dreadful is that!?

Winners today are very trendy with their use of materials, fashionable with their glass curtains and fancy mullions...very stylistic but they rarely have style.

Ma(ha)ldives

Kandooma was awesome.
Kandooma Resort was remarkable.
Kandooma Resort's hospitality was mediocre.

If only the standard of hospitality is comparable to that of South-East asia's ( minus Singapore ).
I will return to the Maldives one day,
but not to Kandooma. Can do mah?