Leong See Kay: Singapore wants to showcase achievements in 2010

SINGAPORE -- Through World Expo Shanghai 2010, Singapore will showcase the city state's achievements in sustainable development, its continuous drive to reinvent itself, and lesser known aspects beyond its economic success, says a Singapore official.

Leong See Kay, director of the Singapore Tourism Board's World Expo, said the key objectives of the country's  participation in the Shanghai expo are to highlight the city state's expertise in offering a high-quality and integrated live-work-play environment within a compact area.

Singapore also wants to showcase its achievements in urban planning, water technology and environmental services, and profile its work in the Tianjin Eco-city and the Summer Youth Olympic Games, she said.

She added during an interview with Xinhua that the country intends to promote closer people-to-people relations between China and Singapore.

Leong said the Singapore Pavilion, with a theme of Urban Symphony emphasizing the city state's  harmony and progress, showcases the country's transformation into a model global city that combines sustainability and quality urban living.

"The theme Urban Symphony was inspired by the harmony of unique elements in Singapore: Progress and sustainability, urbanization and greenery, tradition and modernity, and the different races living in harmony together," Leong told Xinhua.

"The two environmental areas that Singapore has successfully made headway with in balancing progress with sustainability - water and garden - will form the soft scape of the pavilion as its two design elements," she said.

Urban Symphony, she continued, aims to articulate the city state's rhythm and beat through the pavilion's architecture of water fountain movements, window and sunshade fin layouts on the facade, interplay of sounds and visuals on different levels and a mlange of flora on the roof garden.

As for the Singapore Pavilion, which will span 3,000 square meters and is designed to resemble a magic music box, Leong said only four columns of different shapes and sizes support its structural system and the floors above.

In line with the theme of sustainability, she said, recyclable materials such as aluminum and steel will be used for the facade and structural framework of the pavilion.

There will be a Garden in the Sky -- a roof-top garden of tropical flora specially landscaped to recapture the essence and the beauty of living in a garden-city, Leong said.

The design, she said, will incorporate facade slits, which allows a cool breeze in the heat of summer, and chilled water along the perimeter of the ground floor to reduce energy consumption for air-conditioning.

Construction of the Singapore Pavilion will start in early June and Singapore aims to attract 10 million visitors after its completion in April 2010.

Leong said World Expo Shanghai 2010 will see the largest-scale participation by Singapore yet in any expo, not only in terms of pavilion size, but also in terms of resources.

She attributed this partly to a testament to Singapore's confidence in China as a host country and the city state's intent to build on the  existing good relations between the two countries.