Edmund Cheng: Forming Public Spaces

Edmund Cheng is one of the main, quiet forces behind the growth of Singapore's contemporary art scene. Since the early 1990s, the Hong Kong-born real-estate developer has lobbied for art to be placed in publicly accessible locations. [...]Edmund-one of seven sons-embarked on his education in the United States, first studying civil engineering in Chicago at Northwestern University, and subsequently pursuing his passion for architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, where he earned a Master's degree in 1980. For MBC I, Cheng enlisted Tay Swee Lin, former curator at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and the National Museum of Singapore (whom he also invited to help select artworks for Changi Airport's Terminal 3 when Cheng was the director of the Singapore Airport Terminal Services in 2003), to organize the first series of eight public-art projects-including Kim Jongku's Rain Tree (2010), a stainlesssteel tree that spouts water during certain periods of the day, and a sound-sculpture by Singaporean collective Farm called The Conch (2010), which sprawls across the property's open plaza with its plant-like arms bearing wind funnels that invite visitors to listen to nature sounds.