20 photos that show how dramatically Singapore has changed in two decades

[SINGAPORE] For Darren Soh, photographing architecture was never just about making buildings look good.

“When I started, I was very concerned about aesthetics – how buildings look and their forms,” he says. “But somewhere along the way, I felt that was insufficient. I didn’t want to just photograph buildings without understanding the ideas behind them, why they look the way they look.”

Soh now approaches buildings not just as objects – but as expressions of their time, shaped by design thinking and constrained by the city’s space limitations. It is a sensibility that has made him one of Singapore’s most sought-after architectural photographers.

Singapore is constantly changing, he says, and its buildings do not last. “We can’t save every building, no matter how much they mean to us. But we can photograph every one of them before they are demolished.”

Over the years, he has documented old housing estates, civic landmarks and modernist icons before they were torn down, creating a striking archive of a Singapore that is constantly slipping out of view.

Not surprisingly, his photographs are frequently collected by local museums and particularly resonate with Singaporeans living abroad, who use them to reconnect with a city they no longer see daily.

He’s also been recognised by several international photography awards, including the Commonwealth Photographic Awards and the Prix de la Photographie, Paris.

Soh’s images are typically well-composed and elegant, with straight lines and careful light – eschewing the gimmicky angles and visual tricks that dominate social media. “You have to respect the building, and be faithful to its intent and place in time,” he says.

He recently turned 50 and simultaneously marked his 20th year as an architectural photographer – so he’s taking a moment to reflect. We asked him to select 20 of his favourite photographs as a record of two decades of change.

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1. Mustafa Centre (2006)

“This was one of my first architectural photographs. I was obsessed with the German photographer Andreas Gursky, the way he packed so much detail into a single image, and I wanted to do the same. I had just purchased a large-format camera, the kind you hide under a cloth, and this felt like the right subject. If you look closely at the high-resolution image, you can literally see the hundreds of biscuit brands on the shelves.”

2. Big Splash (2006)

“Big Splash was once a popular water theme park, famous for its 85-metre slide. It declined in popularity and closed in 2006 for redevelopment. But just before demolition, I sneaked in at night to take a photo. The place was dark, with only faint residual lights and distant street lamps from East Coast Park. I used a long exposure, so the image became bright enough to see details... But this photo kick-started my journey to document buildings that are not going to survive.”

3. Last National Day Parade at National Stadium (2006)

“I managed to get a ticket to the 2006 parade – the last one held at the old stadium before it was torn down. I remember sitting on the wooden benches with the crowd, this big camera and tripod beside me, probably looking a bit out of place – but no one seemed to mind. I only had 10 film holders, so just 10 shots in total. This was the best of them.”

4. Mushroom counter at Paya Lebar Air Base (2008)

“This is the reception counter at Paya Lebar Air Base, which I got to shoot for a Wallpaper magazine assignment. There are the kinds of places that the public has little access to, that somehow remain stuck in time because the owners of the building have decided to leave it alone while the world outside carries on.”

5. Construction of Marina Bay Sands (2009)

“A lot of my work deals with the liminal states of buildings – when they’re in the process of being built or about to be demolished. Some of these liminal states last a few months, some a few years. This is Marina Bay Sands while it was being constructed. I climbed the Sheares Bridge up and down several times to get this shot at sunset. Thankfully, the clouds were behaving.”

6. Former Queenstown Cinema (2012)

“Built in 1977 and demolished in 2013, the cinema is tied to my childhood – I grew up nearby. This was taken just after the rain, the kind that leaves behind a rare, luminous light, perfect for photography. It remains one of my favourite images.”

7. Construction of D’Leedon (2012)

“This is D’Leedon, a much beloved condominium designed by Zaha Hadid, while it was being constructed. I stood on an overhead bridge nearby and took multiple one-minute exposure shots while the cranes were moving, then stacked the images together using Photoshop – so what you get are these rings of lights.”

8. Block 82 Commonwealth Close (2013)

“Block 82 is one of the first Housing & Development Board (HDB) blocks ever sold to the public. As a young kid, I lived in a three-room flat with my brother, parents and grandparents. Later on, I developed a ritual (in which) every time I buy a new camera or phone, I would go back there and take a shot of the block. I’ve done that several times now.”

9. Block 406 Clementi Avenue 1 (2013)

“Built in 1977 and demolished in 2017, the block had a large tree in front of it. In the afternoons, it would cast this beautiful, almost perfectly composed shadow across the facade... Over the years, I’ve looked, but never quite found anything like it on any other block.”

10. Block 19 Jalan Sultan (2014)

“This rental block was built to resettle residents from the squatters of the Rochor area in the 1970s. I came across this view from the fire escape at the top of the Textile Centre. What struck me was how abstract it looked like at first glance – almost like a pattern. Yet, the closer you look, the more life reveals itself: plants, bicycles, shoes, all the small details of how people inhabit a space.”

11. Former Rochor Centre (2014)

“In 2010, they announced that Rochor Centre was going to be demolished. That was also the year that Instagram was born. And so, this became one of the most Instagrammed public housing estates in Singapore, because of its colourful facade. I will always associate the announcement of its demise with the rise of Instagram.” 

12. National Gallery Singapore (2014)

“National Gallery Singapore opened in 2015. Just before that, they commissioned me to take a photo of its facade. We had to arrange for a cherry picker to lift me to a certain level to get this shot.”

13. Workers Dormitory (Sungei Punggol) (2014)

“This is the S11 @ Punggol Dormitory for Migrant Workers. I took it in 2014 as part of my project, In The Still Of The Night – While You Were Sleeping. During the pandemic, there were large Covid-19 outbreaks in the worker dormitories. So I contributed this photo for an Objectifs fundraiser to help raise money for our migrant workers.”

14. Pearl Bank Apartments (2017)

“Pearl Bank Apartments was once an iconic building – but these days when I talk about it, some young people don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s crazy to me, considering it was demolished not too long ago in 2019... I have many pictures of Pearl Bank, but this is my favourite, taken with a drone in 2017 before the government designated it as a no-fly zone.”

15. Flares off Changi (2020)

“On New Year’s Eve, at the stroke of midnight, the ships that were anchored off East Coast Park used to fire their flares. But the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore banned it for safety reasons in 2021. I took this picture in 2020, a year before the ban.”

16. Woodleigh Glen Built-To-Order (2023)

“This is my first commission by the HDB’s in-house design team, the Building & Research Institute. After years of studying and photographing HDB flats obsessively on my own, they finally hired me to shoot for them. Since then, I’ve had three more commissions by them.”

17. Sengkang Rivervale Shores (2024)

“I made this for my clients, Surbana Jurong, the architects for Rivervale Shores, currently the largest Built-To-Order project the HDB ever built. I have always wanted to include something surprising for my client work – and this image with the rainbow was made just after a storm. There was no way I could have timed this – I was really just lucky.”

18. Singapore Institute Of Technology, Punggol Campus (2025)

“Designed by Woha Architects, the campus has a boulevard that runs almost exactly east-west. Twice a year, during the equinoxes, the rising sun aligns perfectly with the axis of the boulevard. I camped there at sunrise to catch that moment.”

19. Temasek Shophouse (2025) 

“This is one of my latest projects completed in 2026. It’s the refurbished series of shophouses that make up Temasek Shophouse. I love this photo – the light was just perfect that day.” 

20. Singapore skyline, Aug 9, 1990 (1990)

“This isn’t within the range of my 20-year career as an architectural photographer. But it was one of the earliest photos I took of the Singapore skyline. I was 14 and staying with a friend at the Westin Stamford – his parents had booked a room for us to shoot the fireworks of Singapore’s 25th National Day celebrations. You can see how different the skyline looked then. There were still gaps between the skyscrapers, and old buildings that are no longer there.”