This paper rethinks the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC) as a situated soft infrastructure through which postcolonial hybridity is spatially choreographed in everyday life. Rather than interpreting the SCCC as a fixed monument to ethnic culture, the study argues that its soft architecture renders cultural identity as an ongoing negotiation within a tightly governed multicultural city-state. By foregrounding hybridity as a racialised infrastructure of governance, the paper expands debates on how cultural differences are materially produced and regulated in Asian urbanism. Drawing on architectural analysis and a close reading of the permanent exhibition SINGAPO人, the study shows how identity is curated as both participatory and administratively legible. Musealisation functions not as preservation but as affective pedagogy, guiding visitors through narratives that stabilise hybrid culture as normative and nationally coherent. The Centre thereby operates simultaneously as a civic venue, spatial dispositif, and soft technology of cultural management. By situating this case within wider discussions in geography, sociology, and architecture, the paper offers situated hybridity as an analytic for understanding how infrastructures of participation govern belonging. It proposes a model in which postcolonial identity is not only represented but constructed, circulated, and felt through the spatial politics of the everyday.
ChongJI (2020) The burdens of ethnicity: Chinese communities in Singapore and their relations with China. In: ChongT (ed) Navigating Differences: Integration in Singapore. Singapore: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, 165–186.
10.
ChongT (2011) Manufacturing authenticity: The cultural production of national identities in Singapore. Modern Asian Studies45(4): 877–897.
11.
ChongT (2018) The State and the Arts in Singapore: Policies and Institutions. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
12.
ChuaBH (2003) Multiculturalism in Singapore: An instrument of social control. Race & Class44(3): 58–77.
LacatonAVassalJ-P (2018) Generosity and adaptability in architecture: An interview with Lacaton & Vassal. Architectural Review243(1457): 34–41.
27.
LaiAE (2012) The kopitiam in Singapore: An evolving story about migration and cultural diversity. In: LaiAECollinsFLYeohB (eds) Migration and Diversity in Asian Contexts. Germany: ISEAS, 209–232.
28.
LaiAECollinsFLYeohBSA (2013) Migration and Diversity in Asian Contexts. 1st ed. Singapore: ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.
29.
LarkinB (2013) The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology42: 327–343.
30.
LathamALaytonJ (2019) Social infrastructure and the public life of cities: Studying urban sociality and public spaces. Geography Compass13(7): e12444. doi:10.1111/gec3.12444.
31.
LeesL (2001) Towards a critical geography of architecture: The case of an ersatz Colosseum. Ecumene8(1): 51–86.
32.
LefebvreH (1991) The production of space. Oxford: Blackwell.
33.
LianFK (2021) The political construction of race and ethnicity in Malaysia and Singapore: Career of a concept. In: JammesJKingVT (eds) Fieldwork and the Self: Changing Research Styles in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Springer Singapore, 255–270.
34.
LianKF (2006) Race, ethnicity, and the state in Malaysia and Singapore. Singapore: Brill.
RahimLZ (1998) The Singapore dilemma: the political and educational marginality of the Malay community. New York: Oxford University Press.
46.
RendellJ (2006) Art and architecture: a place between. London: I. B. Tauris.
47.
RochaZYeohB (2022) Hierarchies of mixedness: Hybridity, mixed- race racisms and belonging for Eurasians in Singapore. In: AngSHoEL-EYeohB (eds) Asian Migration and New Racism. London: Routledge, 154–172.
TanKP (2012) The ideology of pragmatism: Neo-liberal globalisation and political authoritarianism in Singapore. Journal of Contemporary Asia42(1): 67–92.
