JY 00:10
Welcome to the latest episode of Lecture Theatre with Lee Kah Wee. Kah Wee is the author of a new book, Las Vegas in Singapore: Violence, Progress and the Crisis of Nationalist Modernity. This episode, we'll be talking to Kah Wee both about the book, as well as his experience as a practicing architect, and as a scholar.
Kah Wee 00:42
Thanks, Jun Yan. Thanks for having me. I'm really happy that I can share my experience with you today.
JY 00:49
So Kah Wee, tell us more about your life story. How did you become an academic?
Kah Wee 00:55
I have a degree in architecture. And after I graduated, I worked for a few years in the civil service in the Urban Redevelopment Authority, basically as an urban planner. And I think at some point in time, I decided that my interest, I think lies elsewhere, not necessarily in the realm of practice, I suppose. So I took the plunge. And I wasn't really sure if that whole step in academia was right for me. That was in 2004. But once you have done it, there really is no looking back.
JY 01:41
And what was it like transitioning from being a practicing architect and civil servant at the URA, to being a student and scholar of architecture?
Kah Wee 01:52
It is very different. One major difference, I think, is the work culture. I think, as a bureaucrat, or civil servant, one requires certain qualities and attributes. I suppose at the time, I thought I didn't have them. I didn't think that I would make a very good civil servant. The main difference in terms of work culture is that as an academic, your time is really much more flexible. I remember when I moved from URA to NUS, the first thing that I felt was, "Oh my God, you mean this, I don't have to write minutes, I don't have to, you know, produce something by the end of today and get it signed, approved by my immediate bosses." The sense of process and hierarchy that is in the bureaucracy is much less obvious in academia, which is not to say that there is no bureaucracy in academia; actually, it just operates quite differently. Once you step into academia, you are dedicated to an intellectual life, which is very different from the job and the responsibility of a civil servant.
JY 03:28
And does your experience—as a practicing architect, or an urban planner—in any way inform your own scholarship, and your own thinking about issues of architecture?
Kah Wee 03:41
For those of us who have worked for a few years before entering academia, the exposure to professional life does play a certain role in shaping your intellectual direction. When I was doing my PhD, the kinds of thinkers and the kinds of texts that really appealed to me were those that dealt with the nitty gritty of administration, precisely the kinds of texts that my peers will find absolutely boring. So, I was immediately drawn to people like Webber, more so than the kinds of political theorists that tend to ignore questions of bureaucracy. I was drawn to people like Foucault, and I was drawn to the entire debate about public administration. Because those kinds of things really make sense to me. If you have worked as a civil servant, or a bureaucrat, you realize that things go wrong. Not because of some big decision, but because of any one of the tiny little decisions, or the tiny little steps that were not taken or not considered in full. It's these really nitty gritty things that appeal to me, that I think has some kind of impact on my intellectual journey.
JY 05:20
So you went to UC Berkeley. That was five years. And now you are back at NUS.
Kah Wee 05:31
Yep. I have been back for five years.
JY 05:34
So this might be a good time for us to pivot to talk a bit more about your new book, which I just finished reading. It is a great book, highly recommended. But I'm curious. What triggered your interest in casino design? Why do you decide to write a dissertation and then a book about the casino?
Kah Wee 05:55
It is going to be a very long answer. Because I ended up doing this project in a rather roundabout way. When I started my PhD, and I wrote my research proposal, the idea was to begin with Marina Bay Sands. It's one of the casinos of Singapore, but look at it in terms of framing it in terms of globalization and the transformation of urban waterfronts. So in a sense, it was closer to a kind of urban geography project, looking at these kinds of contemporary forces. But as I looked more closely at the design and the spatial organization of this building, I realized that it's not just any other architectural icon. The casino space, the way it is hidden inside, has quite a few awkward kinds of juxtapositions, that people can either ignore or, I suppose, miss, if they do not look closely enough. Those started to really draw my attention. And I realized that if I were to look at it in terms of just another product or agent of globalization, I really miss out on what is so peculiar about this building. And it's really from that starting point. With this initial moment of puzzlement, I decided thatI need to look back in time and look back into history to understand why it has all these kinds of awkward juxtapositions.
JY 07:47
So for listeners who may not have read the book, why do you think Marina Bay is awkward or peculiar? What was it that caught your eye?
07:57
So there are a few things that are quite awkward, but they're awkward in the sense that they are invisible to most people. But once you see it, you realize why it's so awkward. One is, of course, the fact that the casino is very discreet. So again, a lot of people have missed it unless they have visited most of the other casinos in Las Vegas or Macau. And you realize that in the case of Singapore's casino, the casino space itself is very well hidden within the entire building. It is also completely broken or detached from the hotel space. That is a big no-no in the design of casino resorts. The hotel lobby and the casinos is always seamlessly connected to each other. The other thing that really jumped out at me at some point in time was the fact that the if you go to Marina Bay Sands, you realize that there are these canals where I suppose you could take these fun rides. And it seems to be a kind of strange leftover from a typical Las Vegas Venetian-themed architectural motif where you're supposed to go to Venetian Las Vegas. You can go on these canal rides through a gondola and someone's singing. So it's a bit of a leftover because you can do the sampan ride, but it's been stripped of the thematic ornamentations. And finally, of course, it's called Marina Bay Sands not Sands Marina Bay. When I realized that, I thought there was something quite important here. At some point in time I met a casino designer, a very experienced casino designer and I asked him, "What do you think about Marina Bay Sands?" And he basically taught me that Marina Bay Sands is not designed like a casino resort should be designed. Right? So again that piqued my interest. So there are all these kinds of modifications done to the classic or typical Las Vegas casino resort that one wouldn't notice unless one is aware of what is the proper way to design the casino resort.
JY 10:32
So the structure of your book is interesting, because it starrts and ends with Marina Bay Sands. And the cover of the book is actually a picture of the sky observatory with the sky garden. But then the book itself is divided into two sections, one about the history of gambling control in Singapore, and another about casino design in Las Vegas. It is a brilliant and innovative approach.Calling it transnational almost does it an in justice, because everyone says that they're doing a transactional project, but few do it so skillfully. So say a bit more about why you decided to take this approach and how you have drawn these different threads together.
11:19
Okay, I'm happy that you bring up this point, if you think that the two parts come together. As the author, one of the things that I hope for is that my readers will make sense of these two parts. I was never quite sure if they will come together well. And you know, it's something that I want my readers to let me know. As with any kind of very long research project, you always end up with a multi-headed hydra. It is always threatening to grow more heads and the project is always try to get out of control. Even though I had, at every step of the way, tried to draw the boundary as clearly as possible—the project is always shifting. As you've said, the first part is about the history of the control of gambling in Singapore— both colonial and nationalist Singapore. And the second part is about the emergence of casino design as a sub-profession in corporate Las Vegas. It is bookended by Marina Bay Sands. It begins and ends with Marina Bay Sands.
I think there are a few reasons why the book ended up having these two parallel genealogies. One is really, I suppose, practical. A lot of what I do is trying to make sense of empirical materials that I find and not allow some kind of grand theory of methodology dictate what I should or should not keep within the bundle of stuff that I look at. So that played a role because I was able to find some really interesting things about the control of vice in Singapore. And during my time in Las Vegas, I think I found an excellent collection of of professional journals and architectural plans. Over the years, the question is how I put them together. I think my attempt at putting them together is to not force them together, but to let them sit side by side as parallel historical accounts. And they both have relevance to the present in their own ways. Although at the end of the book, I did try to bring them together and I suppose close the circle.
JY 14:35
But I think there's a strong sense that you don't force them together. You let them speak to each other by themselves. The other thing that I was struck with by your book is how interdisciplinary is. It brings together elements of history, anthropology, critical theory, and of course, urban studies and architectural design. So how do you go about conducting research in such an interdisciplinary fashion?
Kah Wee 15:07
So again, I tend to be an empircist in the sense that I start with the materials. So, if I find a stash of architectural plans, which I think are absolutely fascinating, then I have to pick up the skills and teach myself the skills of formal spatial analysis. That is the core skill of any architectural historian. When I found myself grappling with the legal archive and pulling out various kinds of testimonies of police, the legal commentaries of judges, I decided that I had to train myself to understand how the legal system works and how to make sense of these these legal documents. When I looked at the design and the organization of Singapore's national lottery through the Singapore Pools, I was really grappling with the corporate reports, the annual reports, but also a series of very interesting photographs. And the very fact that I could actually attend these public events myself— the weekly lottery draws. And so, I think the first point is that the interdisciplinary nature of the project is ultimately guided by the very different kinds of empirical material is that I find myself grappling with. The other the other thing is that over the course of the PhD, you're exposed to all kinds of different disciplines and methods and these different approaches will find its way into your head at some point in time. But I try to avoid having some kind of grand theoretical structure or methodology; I tend to start with the materials.
JY 17:35
And has it been a challenge trying to convince more traditionally minded scholars to accept the validity of the approach? I was struck by one of the reviews—it was a positive review— which remarked that your book was as postmodern as Marina Bay Sands itself. I thought there's a slight element of skepticism in that. What has it been like navigating that?
Kah Wee 18:03
So the three reviews which made his way into the back cover—with one of them, I think that it's very clear what she meant. Like I said, I suppose writing a book ultimately demands that one takes risks.
JY 18:30
A gamble.
Kah Wee 18:31
Yes, a gamble. So this is a risk I'm taking. I understand that for some scholars, you will be too eclectic, or it doesn't come together as a book. It is too much. Sort of fragmented. Which is fine. I try my best to round it up on properly at the start and the end. But like I said, I don't intend the book to be completely rounded up. I like the fact that it is two parallel genealogies. They act as historical resources in their own right and they speak to the present in their own right.
JY 19:23
Is there a particular moment in your research and writing when you thought, this is it? When you became convinced that this is the risk of the gamble that you're going to take today will pay off?
Kah Wee 19:37
I suppose there is that moment of no return when you decide that well, I've torn the dissertation up, I have rewritten so much of it. I have dissected it, put it back together, completely restructured it. And this is the structure that I think will make sense and this is the way I'm going to do it. And that's it. Yes, there's that. There is that conviction. And I convinced that, you know, as a kind of historiography, and as a critique of the present, I am following a certain model. So right at the beginning, I did declare that I am following a very "Foucoultian history of the present" model, although of course, it is not entirely the same. So, there's that—that conviction that you're convinced: that this is what makes sense for you. And that this is of intellectual merit. The other factor that plays into the moment, of course, is, again, a very practical one: how much more time do I want to spend on this?
JY 21:03
Do you set out to have some sort of wider public impact to your work?
Kah Wee 21:18
I was a bit ambivalent about this. I was never fully decided as to how much of a publicly accessible book this was going to be. Even though it's going to be read by—or is legible or intelligible to the public—I think it will only be so to the interested or educated layperson. I think it's still a bit academic in that sense, which is fine with me. I didn't write this to be a kind of a popular treatise. So no.
JY 22:14
There was that Rice Media article that tried to summarise your book.
Kah Wee 22:21
Yes. So I say he Instagrammified my book. Kudos to him for doing that.
JY 22:30
At this point in my interviews, I usually ask interviewees to kind of summarize their project in a few sentences. But I was actually so intrigued and so moved by the concluding paragraph in your book, that I was wondering if you would be willing to just read it aloud. And then we can talk a bit more about that. So let's just flip to the page.
Kah Wee 22:59
Okay, so I'm going to start:
This book began with a reading of Marina Bay Sands as a fiction of progress without crisis. And in closing, I offer a different image taken at Johore Road in 1980, as the area was undergoing urban renewal. It shows a group of women gathering to gamble in a narrow space between a pile of debris and an eroded concrete wall. Despite the impending destruction of this life world, there is something utterly mundane and casual about the scene. The gamblers do not appear to have taken special precautions to avoid detection. The event is happening in broad daylight, and their relaxed postures do not betray any sense of anxiety. Amidst the seemingly unstoppable forces of modernisation, these tenacious ladies are more concerned with the afternoon game of chance. The general nonchalance in turn makes it difficult for us as viewers to project our own presuppositions about gambling onto the scene. Should they be ridiculed, celebrated, mourned, shamed? This is not to hark back to some romanticized or primordial notion of gambling. Rather, the difficulty in mapping ourselves onto these ladies underscores the crudeness of certain presuppositions about virtue and vice—a crudeness born out of moments of crisis, but which persists beyond them. At the same time, should we not also recognize ourselves in this photograph, that we are all, in one way or another, gamblers?
JY 24:49
Thank you. So why should we care about your conclusion that Marina Bay Sands ultimately represents the fiction of progress without crisis? And that in the end, we are all in some way gamblers? Why should we care about those findings?
Kah Wee 25:19
I think when I wrote this conclusion, I really want the readers to adopt, I suppose, a more humble and reflexive understanding of this so-called vice. Gambling is one of those things that is socially marginal, but symbolically central. People don't seem to do it all the time. But if you bring up the topic of gambling, everybody has something to say about it. And people tend to make judgments about it. But I think I want the readers to—before they make judgments about gambling—pause, realize that a lot of these judgments are passed down through history. They're not natural or logical or immutable principles. But they are a result of historical developments. And there's nothing natural about them.
Before we pass judgment, we should look into ourselves and wonder if we are not also judging ourselves. I think this posture is important, because the entire episode of Marina Bay Sands, is really an attempt—like I said, a fiction of progress without crisis—to deny this internal contradiction that we carry within all of us. It is the fiction of progress without crisis, precisely because the building and the discourses surrounding the building try to erase or hide the kinds of contradictions that the topic of gambling brings up. So it tries to hide the history of criminalization. It hides the whole development of corporate Las Vegas, which really is about maximization of profits. It hides the fact that Singapore has always had some kind of state-sponsored gambling. It hides the fact that the law operates in such a way that has certain kinds of presumptions about the criminality of individuals. So all those kinds of issues that are hidden are designed to give this rather glossy picture, that we have progress or move to the stage where we can accept this casino at Marina Bay, if it looks a certain way.
JY 28:40
Just to be clear, you're not saying that we should not accept them, you're just saying that we should interrogate the assumptions that we have about them. Yes?
Kah Wee 28:49
We should, definitely. We should reflect on the kinds of hidden assumptions that we carry it all of us. I think that will be maybe the most succinct way of saying it.
JY 29:15
In a sense, your book has regained urgency given the recent announcement that the integrated resorts are going to undergo a $9 billion expansion, including the casino area within those resorts. So do you have a take on that? Or a perspective on that in the light of what you have found?
Kah Wee 29:55
So if we look at the current expansion, I'm basically not at all surprised. Every casino design, every casino developer, when they come to a certain location, and they put in the first development, they always plan for expansion. That is principle one of casino design: always plan for expansion. So, in essence, I'm not surprised at all that close to the end of the casino license, they were able to, I suppose, negotiate a deal to allow them to expand that casino. What is interesting, I suppose, is that with the expansion, we still see the same pattern of trying to downplay the casino. So the publicity is all about, well, yes, the casino license is extended to 2030. They are putting in $9 billion, but most of it is hotel rooms. So the casino space doesn't expand that much, in fact; in terms of total proportion it actually falls. So again, you see the same kind of discursive pattern designed precisely to downplay and hide the casino.
But if we look at the numbers, what is the gaming revenue? What is the proportion of gaming revenue to the total revenue of the development? I think, if I'm not wrong, the last time I checked it is about 70% or so. So the amount that the casino generates— even though is 3% of the floor space—is 70% of the total revenue . So once you add in the VIP rooms, I believe the proportion will go up. The VIP rooms are really the most profitable gaming sector and a lot of other cities are basically all pursuing that same small group of high net worth individuals. We call them the whales, right? So Sydney is building a tower that is basically just all VIP casino and villas. I believe the one in Singapore—the MBS one—would be something like that. Macau, of course, is doing it. They are going to open one in Japan. And they're also basically talking about targeting VIPs. So in a sense, I'm thoroughly not surprised. I'm just a bit disappointed that they can't say it for what it is, and we continue to replay this rhetoric that there is really less gambling. So I think that goes back to the point about fiction of crisis, or the fiction of progress without crisis, which is that we can't step out of this need to create this beautiful picture where there are no cracks whatsoever. And we keep perpetuating the story. Again and again, we cannot somehow just say it for what it is. It is a casino that brings in huge amounts of money from casino gaming, just like those that operate in Manila, etc. So if we can say this honestly, and in a straightforward way, I think I'll be much happier. I think the problem precisely is that we have to maintain this kind of sanitized image.
JY 30:57
This is a good moment for us to talk a bit more broadly about academic life and life scholar. So I was wondering if you can say more about the relationship between the practice, teaching and research, especially as it pans out at NUS. There's so much attention to urban studies these days. But I think on some level, no one has articulated the appropriate balance between more critical, and the more applied. So what's your take on that?
Kah Wee 35:05
So I teach primarily in the Masters of Urban Planning programme, and it is professional degree. So of course, there's an emphasis on the applied side of professional training. I teach the history/theory course and qualitative methods. In a sense, I was able to bring in that emphasis on critical thinking and humanities into the program and challenge students to look at the world differently. It is a challenge; it is always very difficult, to insist that professional planners need to understand critical thinking, but I think it can be done in a way that that over the course of a semester, they are actually practicing critical thinking without you telling them that it is actually critical thinking. In a sense, we are all capable of critical thinking. It is just that we tend to do it more in one domain of our life than in another domain of our life. Right. So I think we're all very good critical thinkers, when it comes to our own finances. But we are not very good critical thinkers when it comes to a lot of other things. So that's that. That is a project I have given myself, through the modules I teach in the Masters of Urban Planning programme.
Absolutely, Urban Studies is big and it's a huge interdisciplinary subject. It links many scholars, and in that respect, I have to step outside my department to link with primarily the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences—the geographers, and the sociologists and political theorists—in order for me to participate in that kind of intellectual life. So I think NUS is big enough, such that you can and you have to find your own intellectual home. And you have to create your own intellectual network. If it doesn't happen in your department, then you'll have to find it elsewhere.
JY 38:04
Since you spoke about finances, one of the things that struck me looking at your CV is that you've been very effective at pulling together different grants and fellowshipsto support your work. You're an overseas graduate scholar; you have gotten funding from the Social Science Research Council and from the MOE Tier 1 Academic Grant. So I was just wondering if you can tell us a bit more about what the funding scene is like for the type of book that you're doing. And also, any advice that you might have for students or juniors scholars who might be listening to this podcast?
Kah Wee 38:43
Well, I think at different stages of academic life, you will realize that the opportunities for research funding changes. So as a PhD student, mainly in the United States, for someone like myself, in architecture and social sciences, Urban Studies, we are all competing basically for a set of grants at the national level, and then also at the university level. And then once you enter as a formal employee of a university, like NUS, the grant opportunities will completely change. NUS has lots of research funding. In fact, money is never a problem, I think, when it comes to doing research. NUS is generally very generous compared to other universities.
The problem, really for social science and humanities scholars, especially someone like myself, who want to do ethnographic work, at least for my current project, is not about the lack of money. It is our lack of time. Certain kinds of research requires being yourself in a certain location just grinding away. So, I had the benefit of learning from some advisors that are all basically very good grant writers and advisers. And I never took for granted that there will be money coming in. I think right from the beginning, in my PhD, I knew that if I wanted to do the research that I want to do—if I want to go to Las Vegas, if I want to go to Macau, and maybe even Sydney— if I wanted to do what we call pre-dissertation research, then I had to fight for a lot of these extramural grants. So the training starts very early. And you realize nobody owes you anything.
JY 41:12
So this is a question that I ask all our interviewees. Do you know what you think you'll be working on 10 years from now?
Kah Wee 41:26
So the current project, like I've said, looks at Marina Bay Sands. And then it looks at how this model of an integrated resort is being exported and circulated around the Asia Pacific. That project is definitely not going to stretch for 10 years. I hope to wrap it up in three years, four years at most. In 10 years time...I'm not sure if I can look so far into the future. I have, in the background, an ongoing interest in the politics of bureaucracies. So I also publish papers about how planners plan and the kinds of micro-politics that goes into planning.
In 10 years’ time, maybe what I'll be looking at is architectures or spaces of money: banks, pawn shops, stock exchanges, the kinds of architectures and spaces associated with the accumulation and circulation of money. I think our cultural relationship with money is changing. My parents' relationship with money is very different from my relationship with money. It's changing from something that you work for and save—and it grows over your lifetime, and is then passed on to your children— to a very different conception of money, where it's something that you invest, and then it grows exponentially or disappears exponentially. That relationship is changing. And I think that there is a certain spatial or architectural dimension to this transformation. So, you can see that is related in a certain way to casinos, which, of course, is a very peculiar relationship with money, where money has completely lost its connection to conventional ideas of value, right? So that is something that is growing on me. I think that maybe it's also growing me because as I get older, the question of money is also becoming more and more important.
JY 44:52
The last question, do you gamble?
Kah Wee 44:55
That is the question everybody asks, especially grants officers. They always asked me why should we give you grants, if we think that we gamble away the money? The short answer is no, I don't gamble. At least I don't gamble in casinos. I find it terribly boring. I've tried slot machines, of course, but again, that's terribly boring. I suppose no, if you're talking about casinos, but if you're talking about other more social forms of gambling, yes. But really, like I've said, we are all gamblers, even though it might not be a specific game of chance. But I think in the way we deal with money, there's always this element of risk and chance of the aleatory. Trying to get something for nothing—that dimension is always there. I suppose in that sense, you are a gambler.
