Hoo, boy. For the past couple of years, the Red Dot Traffic Building has been a hip place that hosts offices, parties, pop-up art galleries, flea markets and conventions, with Red Dot Design Museum at its core.
Welp, we’re gonna have to bid farewell to all that when the Ministry of Law takes over the building come May.
In the name of meeting “growing demand and boost[ing] Singapore’s position as an international dispute resolution centre”, the entirety of 28 Maxwell Road will be refurbished to support the expansion of Maxwell Chambers, as declared on its statement.
Long story short: the arms of the law will soon call absorb the former Traffic Police Headquarters. What used to be pretty cool event venue will soon become four floors of international dispute resolution institutions, arbitration chambers, law firms and ancillary legal services. With an expected completion date around 2019, the expansion will feature an additional 120,000 sq ft of space and 50 buildings spread over a new link-bridge, amongst other additional architectural features that’ll be constructed to connect the two adjacent buildings.
Nothing, however, is as big a change as the decision to scrap the building’s iconic red hue to its original bland and wretched off-white colour. It’s all part of MinLaw’s plan to “restore the heritage” of the building.
The building was constructed in 1928 during the British colonial era. First used as barracks for the Police Force, it became the Traffic Police Headquarters from the 1930s till 1999. At one time, the building even housed Singapore’s first driving test centre.
The refurbishment aims to restore its historical features such as the building’s timbre louver windows, inner-leaf façade elements and cast-iron water downpipes – exported from Scotland at the time – while the five courtyards within the building will be restored to their original open-to-sky design.
Also, perhaps to allow for its heritage to share equal spotlight with the legal business side, Heritage@Maxwell was launched today to share its past with foreigners and locals alike, enlisting the help of retired traffic policemen for their experiences with the building, as well as students from Singapore University of Technology and Design’s Architecture and Sustainability Faculty and Engineering Product Development Faculty to develop sharing platforms with the younger generations.
In other words, the building will no longer be cool. RIP.
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