The Singapore Prize recognises outstanding published works in the Chinese, English or Malay languages. The winner and runners-up receive cash prizes and an engraved trophy. The prize is named after Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, who was instrumental in shaping the city into the distinctive clean and green garden city that it is today. The Singapore Prize seeks to promote exemplary thinking and innovation in the fields of urbanisation, planning and governance through the prize awarding process, highlighting best practices that can be replicated in cities worldwide.
The winners of the inaugural 2022 Singapore Prize will be honoured at the World Architecture Festival X (WAFX) in Amsterdam in November. The winner of the Grand Prize will be announced at the WAFX Gala Ceremony, and the other prize winners will be exhibited during the exhibition period from 9-11 November.
A housing complex for elderly residents has beaten flashier competition to win the coveted title of “World Building of the Year” at an international awards ceremony in Singapore. The project was praised for its integration of community space, public facilities and more than 100 apartments for the elderly, beating out high-profile competition including Russia’s World Cup stadium and the Qatar National Library.
During his visit to Singapore, Prince William will meet a range of local organisations that are making a difference to the environment and the planet. The royal will be able to try his hand at dragon boating, a popular sport in the country, and he will attend a United for Wildlife summit featuring representatives of law enforcement agencies, conservation groups and businesses fighting the trade in illegal wildlife products.
Singapore’s biennial literary awards have chosen 12 winners from 43 writers in the four official languages of Chinese, Malay, Tamil and English. This year’s awards, the Singapore Literature Prize (SLP), has been given the theme of resonance, which organisers said was chosen to reflect the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Singaporeans’ lives and how literature can evoke feelings and memories.
The NUS Singapore History Prize is an annual award that recognises publications that have made a significant contribution to our understanding of Singapore’s past. It aims to encourage an engagement with the complexities and nuances of Singapore’s history by broadening the definition of what constitutes historical writing and drawing in non-academic audiences.
A day after the SLP’s 2022 winners were announced, Grace Chia, whose poetry collection Cordelia was shortlisted, accused the prize of sexism in her acceptance speech at the Singapore Writers’ Festival, which she later removed. In the speech, she wrote that the fact that two male poets were deemed worthy of winning the prize “reeks of choice, taste and affirmation of narratives of poetic discourse”. She has since said that her remarks had been misinterpreted and that she had meant no harm. She added that she was still grateful for the opportunity to be nominated for the prize. The prize has yet to respond to her.