Chin Bee Ong Studied 1962-1963

Chin Bee Ong was born in Singapore in 1937 and educated at the Anglo-Chinese School from 1945-56, before travelling to the UK and entering the First Year of the Architectural Association (AA) Diploma course in September 1957. As part of his final year of AA studies, in 1962-63, Ong elected to attend the Department of Tropical Studies, along with his house-mate and friend, Kamil Kahn Mumtaz. After graduating Ong was employed by the Architects Co-Partnership, working on designs for a number of schools in Tunisia. By the late 1960s he had returned to Singapore and was working as Year Master and Tutor at the Singapore Polytechnic School of Architecture and Building and was sitting on the Publication Committee of the Singapore Institute of Architects’ Journal. Ong also co-founded the practice ‘Group 2 Architects’, with Tan Puay Huat, and was successful in bidding for the 1969 government land sale, organised by the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) to redevelop the Central Area of Singapore, winning the commission to build the Singapore Telephone Board’s ‘Telecoms City South Exchange’, a five-storey structure on Choon Guan Street. Major projects followed, with the Queensway Shopping Centre (c1975), one of Singapore’s first multipurpose shopping complexes, which featured a 13-storey apartment tower and four-storey shopping centre with room for over 200 shops, an exhibition hall, nightclub and Singapore’s first public escalators. However, perhaps Group 2 Architects’ most celebrated work was the Public Utilities Board Building at 111 Somerset Road, completed in 1977. This iconic, Brutalist complex comprises two parallel slab blocks, with a façade characterised by vertical ‘fins’ and upper storeys cantilevered out over the lower to form a distinctive inverted ziggurat shape. Originally clad in mosaic and square ceramic tiles, the building was renovated in 2008 when tiles were replaced with metallic cladding. Now re-branded as ‘TripleOne Somerset,’ the complex operates as a mixed-use retail and office space. Towards the end of the 1970s, Ong Chin Bee established his own, eponymous practice and gained further high-profile commissions through URA sales, winning projects in 1979 for the Tat Lee Bank, on Market Street, and for the Park View Holiday Inn (now Holiday Inn Singapore Orchard City Centre). Hotels appear to have been a speciality and the 21 storey Sheraton Towers, on Scotts Road was completed in 1985, the same year that Ong set up a branch in Hong Kong in order to manage Chinees projects, including a $44.2 million ‘Xiamen Oriental Hotel’ and the refurbishment of ‘The New Mainland Hotel’ in Guangzhou district.

Sources

• Architectural Association Student Register, 1963. AA Archives
• Architectural Association Council Minutes, 13th February, 1963. AA Archives
• Architectural Association Student Records, Registrar’s Office. AA Archives
• SIAJ, Journal of the Singapore Institute of Architects, May 1967, No. 12
• A pictorial chronology of the Sale of Sites Programme for private development, Urban Redevelopment Authority, 1983.
• The Business Times, 2nd July, 1985, p.16
• The Straits Times, 5th January, 1986, p.12
• ‘Public Utilities Building - Docomomo Singapore’ by Darren Soh. Docomomo Singapore website, retrieved 25th July 2026: https://www.docomomo.sg/modernist-100/public-utilities-board-building