The CEO of DP Architects believes sustainability in city-making must move beyond balance, calling for regeneration that includes culture and community

In the office of DP Architects, where master plans meet the restless imagination of a city constantly remaking itself, Seah Chee Huang carries himself with the composure of someone accustomed to thinking in layers of decades, not quarters.

As CEO, he leads one of the largest architecture firms in the region, a practice that has shaped Singapore’s built environment for more than half a century. From the Esplanade to Our Tampines Hub, DP’s fingerprints are woven into the city’s fabric. 

“It’s difficult to single out one specific built space because we are such a pluralistic society,” Seah says, when asked what best preserves Singapore’s cultural and historical identity. “The diversity and complexity — whether it’s our culture, history, or identity — they are all embedded within the built environment and various institutions.”

He lists the shophouses of Chinatown and Kampong Glam, where colonial planning meets Peranakan flourishes, and civic monuments like the old City Hall or religious anchors like the Sri Mariamman Temple and Sultan Mosque. Each is a reminder that buildings do not stand alone; they hold the stories of communities.

The question, of course, is what happens when these stories are erased. In Singapore, the demolition of the old National Library remains a scar. “For me, the old red-brick façade — you remember, the front porch and the stairs, the courtyard and verandahs — these were spaces, if not actual places, cherished by generations of Singaporeans, myself included,” Seah reflects.

“When the debate about its demolition and conservation began, I was an architectural student, and it left quite a deep impression. One major takeaway for me was how well-intended decisions can sometimes carry unintended cultural consequences.”

Lessons cities carry forward

This tension — between the economic imperative to redevelop and the intangible need to preserve — runs through much of Seah’s philosophy. He invokes Buckminster Fuller: architects should be “architects of the future, not victims of it”. The loss of the library reinforced for him the responsibility of weighing long-term cultural impact against short-term planning demands.

“Sometimes the harder the lesson, the better we learn and evolve as a society,” he says, pointing also to the fate of Pearl Bank Apartments. Pain points, as he calls them, are part of a nation’s growing up.

Nowhere is that tension more acute than in land-scarce Singapore. “Oh yes, I think it will not only be inevitable, it will be ever-present,” Seah says of the clash between heritage and progress. And yet, he finds hope in the way Golden Mile Complex was saved.

“What I found quite amazing was how the agencies leading this conservation effort, especially URA, being a key player, managed to balance the public and private needs,” he says. DP Architects was involved in feasibility studies that eventually paved the way for unprecedented incentives.

“That public-private partnership, for both people and place, is an excellent example of how such collaboration can work. Jane Jacobs calls it ‘creative friction’. What’s powerful is that heritage, in this case, is not treated as a static relic you can’t touch, but as something adaptable — a framework for life.”

This adaptability has become a refrain in Seah’s language. He often returns to the idea of adaptive reuse, a principle he wishes could become the default. “This is key, not just about preserving the built fabric or the built spaces that reflect our cultural identity and collective memories. The important part is that this aligns with our larger national agenda to move towards what I call better than sustainable. We know sustainability is about reaching balance, but where we’re heading, we have to do much better than that.”

Examples matter. At Bukit Canberra, DP integrated the 90-year-old Admiralty House into new community and sports facilities, while rewilding the site to produce 250 per cent more greenery than before.

It is, in Seah’s telling, a demonstration that “even with urban intensification, you can preserve both built heritage and even green heritage to enhance human and planetary health”. Sustainability here is not abstract jargon; it takes the form of trees planted, spaces reused, and nature reintroduced.

Designing spaces that endure

But Seah is careful not to romanticise the profession. He speaks candidly about how architects do not have a monopoly on foresight. “When we receive the brief — even with input from stakeholders who may have a particular intended use — it is imperative that there are also opportunities for the eventual user to lay their claims to the space,” he says.

“Because nobody has the monopoly of foresight and vision to know, say, in the next five years, how needs and demands will change and evolve.” He calls these “white spaces”, the unplanned gaps where appropriation and reinvention happen. It is a democratic instinct — architecture as the framework, people as the authors.

That instinct explains why he has long argued for the conservation of public housing. HDB estates, he insists, are “living archives, connecting various generations of Singaporeans”. Tiong Bahru’s SIT flats, Toa Payoh’s model satellite town, Queenstown’s first library and clinic — these are more than typologies, they are containers of memory.

“Every estate tells a story, a chapter of Singapore,” Seah says. “They connect different segments of society emotionally, and as a form of architectural built space, they’re significant.”

Younger architects, Seah observes, are beginning to push harder on these questions. “I’d say there’s a stronger consciousness now around some of the issues we’ve discussed — the larger environmental sustainability, the responsibility we have not just as a profession but as part of the global citizenry. There’s also more conversation and participation about heritage, culture, even national identity.”

He doesn’t frame it as generational rupture, but as a shift in emphasis, an appetite for engagement.

Still, the city cannot afford to stop building. Singapore is a project that began improbably and has always lived on borrowed certainty. Seah gestures towards the line of history that runs from kampong compounds to global metropolis, from scarcity to ambition.

“For me, these achievements started as what Jim Collins calls BHAGs — big, hairy, audacious goals, as bold dreams, and then they’re designed and realised with intent, passion, and purpose.” His hope is that the next generation will inherit not just the infrastructure of those dreams, but the courage to dream new ones.

He quotes former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong: “Each new generation will leave their mark on our city, as their predecessors have done.” For Seah, that line captures both privilege and responsibility.

“It’s also about inheriting the mindset of building in a way to pay forward, like how we have stood on the shoulders of giants and pioneers, to allow the next generation to continue to grow, evolve and thrive, and shape our shared future.”

What emerges in conversation with Seah is less a doctrine than a sensibility: that buildings matter because they root us in time. After all, they carry both the permanence of brick and the fragility of memory.

To lose them is to risk a kind of urban amnesia; to keep them alive is to accept that spaces will be reshaped, appropriated, and even misused. That, too, is life.

And so the story loops back to his refrain: to live with our spaces rather than against them, to allow both the grand icon and the humble void deck to coexist as chapters of the same book. It is a book still being written, often with erasures, sometimes with bold new lines. But always with the possibility that someone yet to come will read it, claim it, and inscribe their own.