Marine Parade Community Building

The building sat on reclaimed land first occupied by the Marine Parade Community Centre, which was built in the early 1980s and later renamed to Marine Parade Community Club. In March 1995, the People's Association (PA) announced plans to spend S$9.56 million to upgrade 54 community centres and clubs that were over ten years old, adding facilities such as lifts, dance studios, karaoke rooms and multi-purpose air-conditioned activity rooms, to make community centres more user-friendly, with open concept offices and reception areas. In June 1995, then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong asked PA to study the idea of having community centres share their premises with other civil users such as libraries, government offices and commercial developments. Goh, who is also a Member of Parliament (MP) for Marine Parade Group Representation Constituency (GRC), suggested combining the Marine Parade Community Club, which was slated for upgrading, with the National Library branch in Marine Parade, in a six-storey building with three floors for the community club and three for the library. In June 1996, Wong Kan Seng, PA's deputy chairman, announced that due to the scarcity of land in Singapore, eight of the redeveloped community centres, including Marine Parade Community Club, would be located with other civil users. As 30% of the upgrading cost had to be paid by the community club, several fundraising activities were carried out for the redevelopment. These activities, which included music concerts, golf tournaments and cyclethons, raised a total of S$6 million. Demolition and new building In 2018, plans were shown to Goh, then-an advisor for the Marine Parade Grassroots Organisation, for a renovation of the building. The building was later scheduled for demolition in 2022, despite calls from the community for it to be preserved. Some argued that the building's mural wall was "iconic" and should "at least be retained and restored". Despite this, the building was closed on 22 June 2022 and was entirely demolished by 2023. The new building would also link to the Marine Parade MRT station to increase connectivity and house the Marine Parade Public Library. ==Facilities==

s, trivia, and multimedia tools. The library had more than 150,000 books and 2,500 videos available for loan. There was a café on the ground floor, and the library was fitted with numerous couches and benches for the public's use. Other facilities include multimedia stations, do-it-yourself service stations, and music posts equipped with headphones. ==Architecture==

The architectural form of the Marine Parade Community Building has been described as a "dragon", with the roof as a crest and the artwork as the eye of the dragon. The horizontal louvres on the library block were seen as the tail fins of the dragon, an auspicious beast in Chinese culture. The library block was predominantly clad in glass, fitted with horizontal fins, on its frontage with the main road. The alfresco café had a street frontage and was spread into the shared forecourt. Called Texturefulness of Life, the artwork made use of a variety of materials such as glass and wood. The artwork's centrepiece resembles a huge human eye plastered on a wall, made up of tiny mosaic tiles arranged by computer-aided design. Surachai's abstract piece was the winner in the "Art on Wall" design competition, organised by the Marine Parade Community Club Management Committee in 1998. A panel of international judges picked the winning design from a total of 66 entries submitted by artists, architects, and designers from all over Southeast Asia, including 40 entries from Singapore. Led by local art historian T. K. Sabapathy, the panel felt that the winning entry best reflected the contest's themes of dynamism, interaction, fusion and harmony. The mural was installed on the curved facade of the community building at a cost of S$50,000. ==Notes and references==