Divine Deco
(Interior of the Divine bar. Clockwise from left: wall frieze, Ying and his drink, a second wall frieze, bar view: Park View Square, Singapore)
Prepare yourself for the postmodern epitome of silliness. Asia is a magical place where anything is architecturally possible, anything a person can imagine can be realised with enough capital. Take for instance this building interior in Singapore, the interior décor is quite evidently a take on Art Deco and it is dazzling. Even the exterior is an impressive Deco brick of a building. It is reminiscent of Batman’s Gotham City skyline or of a New York monster office block. Back inside, the ceiling is monstrously high, the gold, marble and copper shimmers from every beveled surface. The wood inlays are impressive, attractive and magnificently preserved, or so I thought. It is a sham! It was built less than ten years ago. The copper is moulded plastic and plaster, the marble too and even the inlaid wood. It is an incredibly superb fraud and I love it. It has been so brilliantly executed and still manages to provide a smart, convincing atmosphere in the centre of Singapore.
Wait, the best is yet to come. Each evening after 7pm, one may order a bottle of wine from the menu. An angel, clad in a tutu and wings will winch herself up behind the bar to a towering library of wines, choose the desired bottle and flap back down to serve it. I wish we’d managed to visit in the evening, but I wonder if it can live up to the hype. We were satisfied enough with the smashing plastic décor. What I love about Asia is that it has the power to create fantastically novel buildings and attractions with little foresight into how they will age, be used, make profit. So many new buildings in China are empty already; they must have been built five years ago, had their heyday shortly after (if at all) and have already been left to decay. It is a bizarre phenomenon that could never occur in the UK as planning and building are so phenomenally expensive and labourious. The Crowne Plaza hotel in Suzhou is situated at the lakeside and looks exactly like a cruise liner. It reputedly has all the trappings of a real cruise ship, right down to odd shaped cabins, stairways onto the decks and balconies as sightseeing decks. I hope one day to go there and show you myself. There is a certain respect I have to give architects here for just being so jolly stoical about the fine details of their crafted novelties.
