The contest between the monument and the body is a recurring theme. It is essentially the story of architecture told through the user, the occupant, or the people who work and live in these architectures.

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The middle months of 2014 have seen a frenzy of news and media coverage on Singapore's new Sports Hub, the largest public-private partnership known. This new state icon promises to deliver the goods, striving as it were, to present itself anew every single day, for the next twenty-five years.² Built on the site of the old National Stadium (demolished in 2010), replete with the latter's socio-historical memories of National Day parades and the home team's football fans' unmistakable "Kallang roar," the outward premise of, and brief for, this instant monument are straightforward—an arena for world-class sporting activity, and a place where the populace may be enticed to engage sport as leisure.

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But the Sports Hub is a different kind of place. It is non-exclusive—everyone can enter, and by implication, it signals a wholesome space, fit for all, good for any body. Here, for the first time, one may walk along the waterfront, not accosted by the need to buy something just to be by the water's edge. There is a promise of swimming, running, and playing alongside the best in Singapore and in the world. Here, an egalitarian view of the world and our right of place in it, are still for the time being, in focus.