Abstract
Despite their rapid proliferation across cities world-wide, observation wheels have received far less attention in the academic literature. Drawing on recent work that theorises architecture as mobile, this paper argues that observation wheels must be understood not only as local features of the urban landscape but also as popular travelling urban forms. However, not all wheels have equal propensities for travel. As this paper will show, although the Singapore Flyer is currently the world’s tallest observation wheel, it is much less referenced as a model of inspiration by cities seeking to construct their own wheels as compared to its predecessor, the London Eye. This, it is argued, points to how certain cities continue to be deemed as being more desirable of emulation than others, a reality that should challenge us to remain sensitive to the persistent inequality of our urban worlds.
1. Introduction
From nostalgic yester-years to the urbanised present, the Ferris wheel has long captivated the imaginations of people. Today, Ferris wheels, or perhaps more accurately, observation wheels, are fast becoming key architectural features of many cities. However, wheels are not simply local attractions offering a bird’s eye view of the city; they also travel as inspiring wheels of fame and fortune. Ever since the London Eye took off in 2000, there has been a rapid proliferation of observation wheels world-wide. Yet, despite media coverage in publications such as The Economist and The Guardian vacillating between fascination for, and condemnation of, these giant marvels, observation wheels have received far less attention in academic literature beyond engineering disciplines. While the employing of spectacular architecture as a boosterist strategy is a topic of great interest among urban scholars (King, 2004; Sklair, 2006), such work tends to focus on unique buildings capable of distinguishing one city from another. In contrast, the replication of rather similar-looking wheels across cities renders them more nondescript than monumental, despite their hyperbolical proportions. As a result, while wheels have been discussed as popular tourist attractions (Henderson, 2010), sustained analysis of how and why observation wheels are replicating across cities is sorely lacking. It is this gap in the literature that I hope to address.
This paper argues that observation wheels must be understood not only as local attractions but also as popular travelling urban forms. Using the Singapore Flyer as a case study, I show how observation wheels are not only often inspired by wheels from elsewhere, but are also, in turn, capable of travelling as models of inspiration. I first illustrate how the Singapore Flyer was inspired by the London Eye, an act that not only reflected Singapore’s desire to emulate what it saw as one of the world’s most pre-eminent cities, but also its intention to supersede it. However, although the Singapore Flyer is currently the world’s tallest observation wheel, it is much less referenced by cities seeking to construct their own wheels as compared with the London Eye. This, I argue, is telling of how certain (global) cities continue to be deemed as being more desirable of emulation than others, thus causing their wheels to travel more rapidly as models of inspiration. Remaining cognisant of these unequal urban imaginaries is important and, as I reflect in the conclusion, will allow us to reach a better understanding of the uneven rates and extents to which architecture travels.
2. The Travel of Architecture
Despite the practice of architecture being stretched across space, the built environment has rarely been studied for its connections with places elsewhere. However, recent interest in themes of movement/stasis has meant that this is starting to change (Kraftl, 2010). Encouraged by liberalising economic markets, proliferating transnational cultural flows and the growing mobility of highly skilled workers, architecture is now said to travel (and be products of travels) in various ways (Guggenheim and Söderström, 2010). On the one hand, architecture is increasingly recognised as being produced out of a variety of constructive flows, from the embodied expertise of architects and engineers who converge on a building project (McNeill, 2009; Traganou and Mitrasinovic, 2009) to the non-human flows of material sourced from different places (Edensor, 2010). On the other hand, buildings also travel as representations through stories and images in newspapers, film and the Internet (Bunnell, 2004; Grubbauer, 2010), as well as more abstractly as building types from the tall building to the bungalow (King, 1984, 1996). That said, buildings rarely travel in coherent forms. Kuppinger (2010), for instance, notes that, while the influx of Muslim migrants into the German city of Stuttgart has encouraged the development of mosques, these spaces are often altered ones made deliberately invisible, thus reflecting their continued marginality as a community. Similarly, while global design firms may enable particular architectural styles to travel, local regulatory and cultural practices also influence their resultant material forms and symbolic meanings (Faulconbridge, 2009; Imrie and Street, 2009). Hence, the globalisation of architecture rarely translates into homogeneous designs. Instead, these travels are often transformative ones in which buildings evolve as they become emplaced in new environments.
The entrance of more fluid and relational imaginaries of architecture, however, cannot be said to be completely novel. Urban scholars have long acknowledged that iconic buildings are created for global consumption and are thus arguably designed to travel. This rise of “spectacular space” (King, 1996, p. 97) is especially evident in Asian cities where hyper-building projects function as place-marketing and worlding strategies (Bunnell, 1999; Olds, 2001). As cities engage in acts of “citation, allusion, aspiration, comparison and competition” (Roy and Ong, 2011, p. 17) of inter- (and self-) referencing, such urban spectacles are drawn upon as powerful visual manifestations of a city’s success. Yet, as McNeill notes, it remains
that some skyscrapers, some architects, and some skylines are more discussed, represented and cognized than others (McNeill, 2005, p. 42; original emphasis).
As this paper will demonstrate, the travel of observation wheels too, has such an uneven politics in which some wheels tend to travel more than others.
3. The Travel of Observation Wheels
3.1 Wheels from Past to Present
As with every architectural form, the observation wheel has a history of cultural production. George Washington Gale Ferris, an engineer specialising in building steel bridges, is widely agreed to be the one who brought the name ‘Ferris wheel’ into popular existence (Anderson, 1992). Unveiled in Chicago on 12 June 1893 as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Ferris’ wheel tipped the scales at 2 million pounds with cars that weighed 26 000 pounds and a “89 320 pound axle … the largest hollow forging in the world at the time” (Meehan, 2000). Standing at 264 feet (80.5 metres), this towering structure also came at a suitably impressive financial cost. With the US suffering a major economic depression in 1892, it was with considerable difficulty that Ferris attained $600 000 to capitalise the Ferris Wheel Company. Nevertheless, while the story of Ferris’ wheel can be easily romanticised as a tale of an inventive engineer fulfilling his dream, it is also a narrative embedded within a larger play of power. Ferris’ wheel was, after all, a response to a challenge issued by the chief of construction for the 1893 exposition, Daniel Burnham. Noting that the Paris exposition, held four years earlier, had unveiled the Eiffel Tower to world-wide acclamation, Daniel urged American engineers to repeat such a feat. Fuelled by the knowledge of a global audience looking on, the wheel was Ferris’ answer—a structure that would demonstrate to the French (and the world) that America was capable of something equally outstanding.
Today, observation wheels continue to allow cities to make dramatic statements to an on-looking world. Wheels today are travelling faster than ever through multiple conduits: tourists who bring home memorabilia, technical information of wheels that travel through specialist knowledge networks as carried by design professionals, as well as inter-references made to the wheels of other cities by those planning to build their own. However, what cities are brandishing today is not simply the possession of a wheel but more so the comparative grandeur of its size (Table 1).
World’s tallest observation wheels
Developed by the Great Wheel Corporation.
Sources: Emirates News Agency (2005); Las Vegas Sun (2011); LondonNet (2011); Great Wheel Corporation website (2004).
As evident from Table 1, observation wheels today are easily twice the height of the original Ferris wheel, reaching heights of more than 100 metres due to advancement in technology. This has led many developers of wheels to stress that they should be known as Giant Observation Wheels (GOW) instead. Among other reasons for such a distinction, the carriages of a GOW are climate-controlled and kept level by mechanical means for greater stability, whereas those of a Ferris wheel are kept level only by gravity (Singapore Flyer, 2011). Nevertheless, as in Ferris’ day, financial backing still remains a crucial factor of success, a reality evident in how all four wheels proposed by the Great Wheel Corporation (GWC) (also a consultant for the Singapore Flyer) have been abandoned due to financial woes. The Great Beijing Wheel Company was placed under receivership in 2010 (The Business Times Singapore, 2010), while GWC itself underwent probes for allegations of embezzlement (The Straits Times, 2010). Clearly, the financial challenge posed by constructing a wheel of such proportions is great. Hence, while many cities have announced plans for GOWs, very few have succeeded in seeing them through to fulfillment.
3.2 Tracing Travels
In order to study observation wheels as a travelling phenomenon, this paper takes its inspiration from mobile methods (Büscher et al., 2011; D’Andrea et al., 2011). Moving away from the traditional notion of fieldwork as being situated within a single time and space (Burawoy et al., 2000), I map out where stories of wheels are travelling to as evident in their coverage by international news media. The LexisNexis database was used to search for newspaper publications, from which 242 articles on the Singapore Flyer and 434 on the London Eye were amassed. Particular attention was paid to foreign reports on both wheels outside their respective countries as evidence of the wheels travelling (albeit in representational forms) beyond their local environments. Instances where both wheels were cited as models of inspiration for wheels elsewhere (i.e. inter-references) were also singled out. In addition, interviews were conducted with two individuals who have enabled stories of the Singapore Flyer to reach both general and expert audiences world-wide—a marketing representative of the Singapore Flyer and the project manager of the Arup engineering team behind the Flyer’s construction.
4. The Travels of the Singapore Flyer
4.1 The Singapore Flyer
The Singapore Flyer is a giant observation wheel located in Singapore’s Marina Bay, a prime urban waterfront development situated on land progressively reclaimed from the sea from the 1970s to the 1980s. The first major attraction to become operational in the area, it stands at an impressive height of 165 metres atop a three-storey terminal building and is currently the largest GOW in the world. While plans to build the Flyer were only made public on 27 June 2003, Singapore-based Melchers Project Management Pte Ltd had already considered the possibility of developing a GOW in Singapore earlier in the decade. The story is told that the idea was born out of a ‘chance meeting’ over dinner between Patrick McMahon, the head of the entertainment department of Melchers, and Brendon McNiven, an Arup engineer who had worked on the London Eye (Reid, 2009, p. 45). Having known each other from previous projects, McMahon made known his idea to develop a similar GOW in Singapore in which Arup could play the leading engineering role. The idea took flight. Partnering with Orient & Pacific Management to form a new company, Singapore Flyer Pte Ltd, Melchers then set out to find both collaborating firms (Table 2) and potential investors. Despite it being a private-sector project, the Singapore government saw the potential for it to become “one of Asia’s recognizable attractions” that would add to the “necklace of attractions” planned for the high-profile Marina Bay area (TODAY Singapore, 2005). It thus pitched in to show its support with a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Melchers and the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) on 27 June 2003. Under this agreement, STB would purchase and lease the land for the project to Melchers for 30 years while granting it free rent until the first day of its operation (The Business Times Singapore, 2003).
The firms behind the Singapore Flyer
Source: Singapore Flyer (2011).
While the Flyer was scheduled to begin operations in 2005, funding difficulties caused its construction to be delayed. An ultimatum was supposedly set (but denied) by STB for 31 March 2005 for the developers to sort out its financial problems (The Business Times Singapore, 2005). However, it took them nearly six months before two German banks—Delbrueck Bethmann Maffei (DBM) and Bayerische Hypo-und Vereinsbank (HVB Asia)—agreed to invest SGD$240 million, the largest foreign direct investment in a single tourist attraction that Singapore had received up to that point in time (CNA, 2005). Upon securing the necessary investment, construction began swiftly and, within three years, the Singapore Flyer was officially opened on 15 April 2008 (Table 3).
Key development milestones of the Singapore Flyer
Source: Singapore Flyer (2011).
The Singapore Flyer was projected to attract up to 2.5 million visitors in its first year of operation (CNA, 2005), thus giving a much needed boost to Singapore’s tourism economy inching its way to recovery after the 2003 SARS crisis. Its prime location within the up-and-coming landscape of Marina Bay was also significant, with then-Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan expressing hopes that it would not only transform the city skyline, but also “change the Singapore experience for our visitors” (Singapore Flyer, 2005). However, to view the Singapore Flyer as simply a local tourist attraction would be insufficient. Rather, the Flyer is also situated within broader discourses surrounding GOWs and their associations with the success of particular global cities, not least of all due to the Flyer’s development in the wake of the famous London Eye.
4.2 From London to Singapore
I can’t really imagine a world with several Eiffel Towers or several Statues of Liberty … I think for [the London Eye] to work, it needs to remain rare (David Marks, London Eye architect, on BBC News, 28 April, 2000).
When David Marks spoke these confident words in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the London Eye had just been launched to a successful start. No other city in the world had an observation wheel that big to call its own. Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Eye was deemed a unique architectural feature of the city’s landscape that distinguished it from the rest. Yet, barely three years later on 23 June 2003, an island state halfway around the world made known its intentions to build a wheel that would exceed its height.
A British tabloid newspaper, The Daily Mail (2003), described Singapore’s announcement rather wittily as a ‘stab in the eye’ for London. Right from the start, developers were quick to point out that its proposed 165-metre wheel would be higher than London’s by a whole 35 metres. As a result, while the Eye provided ‘uninterrupted views of London’ (BBC News, 1999), it was reported (if a little smugly) that the Singapore Flyer could offer views not only of the city but also of “a 45km panorama of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia” (Allsop et al., 2008, p. 4). Indeed, this obsession with height was so great that a local newspaper ran a story on how the Flyer could have been even taller if not for restrictions imposed by its proximity to the nearby Paya Lebar Airbase (The Straits Times, 2003). Yet, even at its constrained height, the Singapore Flyer would still be able to displace the London Eye from its title as the world’s tallest and cause the British wheel to “lose its reputation” (The Edge, 2007). However, the incessant emphasis that Singapore was placing on its superior height is only half the story. The Singapore Flyer after all, did not appear out of an idea vacuum and was in fact directly inspired by the London Eye. Indeed, beneath Singapore’s basking in the (temporary?) glory of having the world’s tallest wheel, there lies a subtle pride in being associated with one of the world’s most pre-eminent cities.
First, there has always been a desire for the Singapore Flyer to possess an iconic status similar to the London Eye, an aspiration that can be discerned in Singapore’s repeated references to its predecessor. Even as David Marks situated the London Eye firmly among architectural marvels of cities today, developers of the Flyer referred to strikingly similar landmarks in their early promotional campaign, proudly proclaiming that it would “rival the likes of the Empire State Building … and even the Eiffel Tower” (CNA, 2003). The Managing Director of Singapore Flyer Pte Ltd, Peter Purcell, also declared at the groundbreaking ceremony
The Singapore Flyer will undoubtedly be one of Asia’s most distinctive visitor attractions and will be Singapore’s own recognizable icon in the minds of tourists, much like how the Eiffel Tower and London Eye have come to symbolize France and England. (Singapore Flyer, 2005; emphasis added).
In other words, the Singapore Flyer was not only meant to be a new tourist attraction, but also a symbolic icon that would place Singapore firmly in the ranks of successful global cities such as New York, Paris and London. However, while Purcell admitted that he “stand[s] accused and plead[s] guilty” of producing a carbon copy of the London Eye (The Guardian, 2003), the Singapore state appeared to take such accusations of plagiarism in its stride. Regional director Kevin Leong from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), for example, was recorded as unabashedly telling Australia’s Wanneroo Times (2008; emphasis added) that the Flyer was “inspired by national icons such as the Eiffel Tower and the London Eye”. These references to well-recognised global cities once again implied that Singapore, too, would attain that same status of primacy by building a similar iconic form. Having its own ‘copy’ of the London Eye was thus not something to be embarrassed about, but rather to be celebrated.
Secondly, the London Eye was not only a symbolic reference point for the Singapore Flyer, but was also heavily drawn upon as a model for its construction. In an act that clearly illustrated its desire to replicate London’s success, the developers of the Flyer conducted an almost wholesale borrowing of the former’s expertise by employing members of its engineering team to build the Singapore Flyer. As Arup engineer, and project manager Brendon McNiven point out, the smooth transference of ideas from London to Singapore was facilitated by the fact that they could refer to “company knowledge lying around … [such as] drawings and sketches” (e-mail interview, 4 July 2011). Nevertheless, while Singapore desired to replicate the symbolic rhetoric of the London Eye through a similar superstructure, its act of mirroring did not extend to its material design. Instead, there was what McNiven calls an ‘evolution of thinking’ as Singapore sought to create an even better attraction. The Singapore Flyer was certainly not a simple replica. As a commemorative book on the London Eye by Marks Barfield Architects points out
The ‘Singapore Flyer’ is not a carbon copy of the Eye. It is supported from both sides, and its capsules are shaped like beer cans, rather than ellipses. It will also sit on top of three levels of retail and dining outlets (Marks Barfield Architects, 2007, p. 149).
As seen in Table 4, the design and construction of the Singapore Flyer were very different from those of the London Eye. Particularly novel was its development of a terminal building. Lamine Guendil, a co-owner of a range of Italian dining outlets, was one of the first commercial investors to bid for retail space for precisely this reason Why do we want to go to the Singapore Flyer? It’s because of the success of the London Eye … one of the biggest mistakes is that the London Eye did not have any retail or restaurant outlets in their concept. And all the restaurants and bars that opened next to the London Eye were making very good business (The Edge, 2007).
Singapore Flyer versus London Eye
Sources: Allsop et al. (2008); Reid (2009).
In addition to its conceptual improvement, the emplacing of the British model within Singapore also led to cultural renegotiations of meaning. In a nod to local customs, the Flyer was designed in line with Chinese geomancy principles. The doubly prosperous number 28 featured heavily with the Flyer consisting of 28 capsules with an interior space of 28 square metres, each holding 28 passengers, and turning for 14 hours each day. Its spinning direction was also changed in a six-figure sum overhaul after local geomancers deemed it detrimental to the city’s feng shui (The Straits Times, 2008). Yet, given that these variations were not immediately apparent, the Flyer still remained very much a copy to the layperson, with ‘netizens’ questioning if Singapore was “running out of ideas” (ExpatSingapore, 2008) and dubbing it as the “World [sic] no. 1 Copycat” (SGForum, 2008). Ironically, these accusations of imitation did enable the Flyer to ‘travel’, if in rather ambiguous ways. Britain’s Mail on Sunday (2008), for example, had to clarify the unwitting error of a would-be British tourist to Singapore who “found no reference to anything called the Singapore Eye” on the Internet, a confusion that suggests that stories of the Flyer were circulating in the UK partly due to its similarity to the British wheel. However, while the Singapore Flyer was at times travelling only in the shadow of its predecessor, independent stories of its success were also circulating world-wide. It is to these travels that I now turn in the next section.
4.3 From Singapore to the World (and Back?)
In the run-in to its official opening on 15 April 2008, foreign reporting on the Singapore Flyer grew in ways comparable to the London Eye during its first year of operation (Table 5). China’s largest news agency reported it as the “world’s biggest observation wheel” (Xinhua General News Service, 2008) while newspapers in Malaysia pointed out that parts of their country could be seen from its highest cabins (Bernama, 2008). Further abroad, The New York Times (2008) reported that Singapore was “supersiz[ing] the Ferris wheel” while The Calgary Herald (2008) described how Singapore now “lays claim to the largest [wheel] in the world”. As the Flyer started its operations, it was featured in television shows including ‘Season 16’ of The Amazing Race (US), the ‘Big, Bigger, Biggest’ series by National Geographical Channel, local drama productions and the latest MTV by popular Korean boyband ‘2pm’ (Singapore Flyer Representative, e-mail interview, 28 June 2011), all of which helped to enhance its visibility on the world stage.
Foreign reporting on the Singapore Flyer and the London Eye
For the Singapore Flyer, this refers to print media outside Singapore; for the London Eye, this refers to print media outside the UK.
At the same time, even as the Singapore Flyer rapidly travelled the world, the world was also travelling to see it. Adval Brand Group, the marketing agency of the Singapore Flyer, was working hard with STB and travel agencies to bring the Flyer to travel shows world-wide, including Germany, India, China and Moscow (The Business Times Singapore, 2007). Their efforts paid off. Sale of the Flyer’s tickets crossed the 1 million mark five months after its opening (CNA, 2008). Over the years, the Singapore Flyer played host to famous and high-profile local and foreign visitors such as Singapore’s President S. R. Nathan, Singapore’s then-Minister Mentor Lee Kwan Yew, Miss Universe 2008 Dayana Mendoza, Hong Kong’s TVB and TVC artistes and even Grammy-nominated American rock band ‘Fall Out Boy’ (Singapore Flyer Pre-Flight Gallery). At the same time, stories of the Flyer were also travelling through the visits of ordinary tourists from abroad, with a reader’s comment in India’s Daily News and Analysis (2011) dubbing it as a must-see iconic attraction similar to visiting the Eiffel Tower when one is in Paris. Needless to say, the Flyer was circulating on the Internet, a medium actively tapped by its management through activities such as an on-line photo-spot contest and a Facebook page (Singapore Flyer, 2011). Beyond the layperson, the Singapore Flyer was travelling through specialist knowledge networks, featuring in Civil Engineering in October 2009 (Reid, 2009), a magazine published by the American Society of Civil Engineers, as well as in the journal Structural Engineering (Allsop et al., 2009). The Arup engineering team behind the Flyer was also invited to share its know-how at the 3rd IStructE Asia Pacific Forum held on the 2–3 November 2007 in Singapore, a regional conference for structural engineers that included a site visit to the Flyer (Arup, 2008). Team leader Brendon McNiven, who gave the presentation and tour, had this to say
[These conferences] are very important, as there are not many other ways that this knowledge gets disseminated. Unfortunately, all you can do is to provide high-level overviews. The detail of the calculations done and the full extent of the decision-making really sits with individuals (e-mail interview, 4 July 2011).
Given the importance of personal interaction in the dissemination of knowledge, fact-finding trips are very important. For the Singapore Flyer, its unique mixed-use development is a key attraction People visit to look at the capsule layout and experience, and also the operations—the way it interacts with the terminal buildings—all of which is very different from the London Eye (Brendon McNiven, e-mail interview, 4 July 2011).
While the exact number of visits hosted by the Flyer is not known, a Singapore Flyer Representative reported that a team from Caesars Entertainment Corporation seeking to develop a wheel in Las Vegas had visited for a flight, a facilities tour and a sharing session on its sales and marketing experience (e-mail interview, 28 July 2011). Possibly due to this visit, an article in the Las Vegas Review (2010) quoted its vice president of public policy and communications who commented that Caesar’s High Roller wheel would be “just like…the Singapore Flyer” in its spectacular nature. Clearly, site visits not only attract visiting officials from other cities, but also enable the Flyer to travel to foreign countries through subsequent media announcements.
However, while the Singapore Flyer is no doubt circulating to a wide range of audiences, the London Eye still remains the predominant reference point for cities seeking to build their own observation wheels. For example, the Bangkok Municipal Authority foresees that the planned Bangkok Eye will be “like the London Eye” (Bangkok Post, 2010) while the war-torn city of Baghdad believes that building a wheel “taller than the iconic 443-foot London Eye” on the Tigris will rake in the tourist dollar (One India News, 2008). The invocation of the British wheel as well as the imitation of its namesake, ‘Eye’, is telling of the desire of these cities to replicate its success. In contrast, the Singapore Flyer’s fame as a reference point has been short-lived. With competitors of the Caesar’s wheel making it to groundbreaking stage, media releases on this second wheel planned for Las Vegas named the Skyvue have shifted the public’s attention back to the London Eye once more. The Associated Press (2011) announced that the same German manufacturer of the London Eye’s bearings was supplying its own, the Las Vegas Review (2011) reported its plans to “model ticket prices on London’s” while Britain’s The Daily Mail (2011) proudly noted that “its developers cited the success of the London Eye as a reason the similar project might be successful in Sin City”. Noticeably, even as all these articles pointed out that the Skyvue would be taller than the London Eye, no reference was made to the Singapore Flyer despite it being taller than both of them. Although the Flyer was mentioned in an earlier article on the Las Vegas wheels (Reuters, 2011), it formed part of an obligatory listing of giant wheels rather than a deliberate note of its inspirational qualities. Rather unfortunately, the Singapore Flyer seems unable to capture the same iconic status as the London Eye, thus leading to it being sidelined in these acts of intercity referencing. As seen in Table 6, out of a (selected) list of eight wheels proposed since the Singapore Flyer started operation, only one made reference to the Flyer as a model of inspiration.
Inter-referencing of the Singapore Flyer and the London Eye
The Singapore Flyer’s popularity as a reference point is evidently limited compared with the London Eye. Indeed, once the hype of its opening died down, very little mention was made of it in the international news media. Ironically, only when the Flyer suffered a major breakdown two days before Christmas in 2008 was there an explosion of news. British news publications, in particular, were quick to report on this embarrassing failure in which 173 passengers were trapped for 6 hours. The BBC (2008) provided dramatic on-line videos of people being winched to safety on rope harnesses hundreds of metres above the ground, after an electrical fire in the control room caused the wheel to stop spinning. The next day, The Daily Telegraph (2008) ran a story entitled “Don’t look down” that wryly implied the sheer terror of being stranded, of all places, on the world’s tallest observation wheel. Beyond Britain, news of the Flyer’s breakdown travelled far and wide (Associated Press On-line, 2008; Japan Economic News Wire, 2008; Aljazeera.net , 2009). Clearly, the travels of built form may not always be positive ones and can result in a slew of negative publicity. Why then, does the London Eye travel more than the Singapore Flyer, and what implications does this have on our understanding of the travel of architecture? The final section moves on to consider these questions.
5. Conclusion
We often think about the built environment in terms of “material, fixed and enduring entities” (Guggenheim and Söderström, 2010, p. 3), as buildings rooted in place rather than buildings on the move. However, recent work on architecture has argued that buildings can travel in, and through, various ways—from the embodied knowledge of travelling design professionals, to representations of buildings circulating through both on-line and off-line media. The proliferation of wheels world-wide is likewise embedded within and enabled by such travels. The Singapore Flyer, for instance, was made possible by the mobile expertise of the Arup engineering team behind the London Eye. As this paper has illustrated, its development not only depicts the travels of a particular building type, but also points to the often-transformative processes of knowledge transfer in which buildings change as they travel. However, at the same time, it is important to note that not all wheels have equal propensities for travel. While this may be a seemingly obvious point, much of the existing literature has concentrated on the politics of how and why individual buildings travel, rather than why some buildings travel more than others. To address the latter requires a comparative approach, for which GOWs provide excellent case studies. Unlike buildings that travel due to their unique designs, the visual similarity of wheels causes them to be recognised as belonging to the same building type, thus providing fair grounds for a comparative analysis. As I have illustrated, the Singapore Flyer has travelled far less as a model of inspiration as compared with the London Eye, with only one out of eight proposed wheels in recent years making reference to it (Table 6). Despite its better engineering and improved mixed-use design, the Singapore Flyer is unfortunately unable to capture the same iconic power as its predecessor, thus leading to it being sidelined in such acts of inter-referencing.
Why then, does the London Eye travel more than the Singapore Flyer as a model of inspiration? First, London’s building of the first GOW in recent decades gives it an advantageous position. Cities invariably look to it as the prime (and original) reference point as opposed to the Singapore Flyer that can be easily dismissed as a copy. However, the fact that London is widely recognised as a successful global city in the West does further enhance its position. In recent years, growing post-colonial sensibilities in urban studies have led to a general reluctance to point to Western cities as models of inspiration. Roy and Ong (2011), for example, argue that intercity emulation can occur in an interAsian manner, even as Robinson (2006) is quick to point out that New York City was a borrower of inspiration from other countries including Japan and India. Yet, when questioned about the flurry of Chinese cities scrambling to build wheels, the director of the China National Tourist Office in Singapore notes that “building a … wheel is a symbol of modernisation” (The Straits Times, 2006), a benchmark set by London when it built the London Eye. Indeed, the fact that almost every GOW that has been proposed in the past decade has made reference to the London Eye, rather than the Singapore Flyer, does suggest that London signifies a certain form of globalness that Singapore does not (or cannot) possess. Clearly, even as cities have the right to inhabit coeval spaces (Massey, 2005; Robinson, 2006), there is a keen difference between the valid theoretical proposition that all cities have a place in academic theorisation and the empirical reality whereby only certain cities and their associated built forms dominate the visible scene. Developing a more inclusive (and politically sensitive) understanding of travelling architecture must therefore involve placing back these very cities that we have been wishing to de-centre.
Footnotes
Funding Statement
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.