Сингапурдың бұрынғы Cathay ғимаратының тарихы

Building in Singapore

The Cathay Building (; ) was opened in 1939 by Dato Loke Wan Tho as the headquarters for the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation. Located at 2 Handy Road in the Museum Planning Area of Singapore, the building was most known for its air conditioned theatre known as the Cathay Cinema, then a technological marvel and the first to be built in Singapore. Cathay Building was the first skyscraper in Singapore and tallest building in Southeast Asia at that time. It was demolished in 2003.

On 9 January 1954, the building reopened as Cathay Hotel with 60 rooms and subsequently expanded to 170 rooms. It had a restaurant, nightclub, swimming pool and shopping arcade. Cathay Hotel was closed on 30 December 1970, with the 10 floors had been converted into office premises and the top floor occupied by the Cathay Organisation by July 1974. The building was refaced in 1978 with a new look by STS Leong. The original design was shadowed by the new facade.

Cathay Building was the location for the first Orange Julius outlet in Singapore, which opened in 1982. In 1990, Cathay Organisation opened Singapore's first arthouse cinema, The Picturehouse adjacent to Cathay Building. The main Cathay cinema hall was also lost when it was subdivided into two smaller halls, losing the all the glamour and grandeur of the original building. The building was also extensively remodelled at this time, and the iconic Art Deco facade of the building was completely covered in various facade treatments deemed fashionable at the time, compromising the design of the original completely. By the time of its closure and subsequent redevelopment, these later alterations left the once grand Cathay Building a shadow of its former self, looking cheap and tacky instead of the glamorous modern building that Brewer designed.

In 1999, Cathay announced the S$100 million plans to redevelop the whole complex. Cathay Building and the Picturehouse would show its last movie in 2000 before closing for redevelopment. The building was nearly completely demolished, with only a small portion of the main facade, which had been covered up for decades, was revealed and preserved. This small remnant of the Cathay Building was gazetted as a national monument for conservation on 10 February 2003, and is the only fragment of the historic building that survives today. The replacement building, designed by Paul Tange of Tange Associates Japan and RDC Architects Pte Ltd Singapore, was named The Cathay; it opened on 24 March 2006. The new Cathay is a generic glass and steel shopping centre with internal atrium, a common typology in Singapore. While it boasts a greater floor area, the new development makes little to no reference to the landmark building that it replaced. The floor levels of the new building completely ignore the retained Cathay Cinema facade, with windows at odd heights. Today, the Cathay houses retail, food and beverage outlets and an 8 screen Cathay Cineplex, which includes The Picturehouse. The Cathay Residences, a condominium development occupying the tower above the shopping mall, opened at the end of 2006. The building has suffered from low footfall since its opening, and always had vacant units. In its short operating life, there were multiple minor alterations, such as the removal of the atrium water feature, and the reconfiguring of the shop layouts. In June 2022, Cathay Cineplexes, which operated the cinema multiplex in The Cathay, announced that it would cease operations there, ending 83 years of operation on the site. A pop up operator, "Projector X: Picturehouse" will operate in the cineplex space instead. In February 2023, the Cathay Organization announced that The Cathay would close for redevelopment in 2023, reopening in 2024, with all mall tenants having to move out by 18 August 2023. The mall currently stands quiet as the remaining tenants move out in preparation of the upcoming re redevelopment.