Liu Thai Ker is a Singapore architect and urban planner who—through his service as CEO of the Housing Development Board and Urban Redevelopment Authority, and Chairman of the National Arts Council—has made an indelible impact on the urban and cultural landscape in Singapore. The eldest son of pioneering Singapore artist Liu Kang, he envisioned and created Singapore’s early public housing estates and new towns in the ’70s and ’80s, and drove the development of the arts in Singapore. He also was founding chairman of the Singapore Tyler Print Institute and currently the chairman of the Advisory Board of Centre for Liveable Cities.

Born in 1938 in Muar, Malaysia, Liu Thai Ker was the eldest of five children. He grew up watching his father, the pioneer Singapore artist Liu Kang, paint, and his uncle, Chen Ren Hou, practise Chinese calligraphy, often helping them wash their brushes.

When World War II ended, Liu moved to Singapore with his family where he would attend San San Primary School and then Chung Cheng High School. An excellent student, he was also a talented artist who won first prize in drawing and calligraphy in a school competition while in his third year. He also wrote poems and short stories for the school magazine.

After a brief stint as a substitute teacher at Kuan Hwa Primary School in 1955, he moved to Australia in 1956 to study at the Sydney Technical College in order to become matriculated and qualify for university enrolment. The following year, he enrolled in the School of Architecture at Sydney’s University of New South Wales and studied there for five years, while undergoing apprenticeships at Clement Glancey Architects (1958-1959) and Loder and Dunphy Architects (1960-1963). He also enrolled as a part-time student at the East Sydney Technical College between 1956 and 1959 where he did life drawings and painting. Upon graduation in 1962, he pursued postgraduate studies in city planning at the prestigious Architecture Graduate School at the University of Yale in the USA, and, in 1965, became an architect-planner at I. M. Pei and Partners, where he gained practical experience in architectural design and urban planning.

Through this period, Liu participated in occasional exhibitions of his art works. He exhibited his sketches of human figures in Singapore in the ’50s and exhibited watercolour paintings in Australia in the ’60s. But his architectural career took precedence as he grew to become a respected architect. He made his last painting—a pastel still life of flowers—in 1960.

In 1969, Liu returned to Singapore and began working at the Housing Development Board as the head of the Design and Research Unit. In 1975, he became Chief Architect, creating some of Singapore’s earlier public housing estates, which he planned as “self-sufficient new towns” that significantly contributed to the new urbanscape in Singapore. The following year, he assumed the role of deputy CEO and became the CEO three years later in 1979. For his contributions to Singapore public housing, he received the Pingat Pendatbiran Awam (Emas) (Public Administration Medal [Gold]) in 1976 and the Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorious Service Medal) in 1985.

After two decades of service at the Housing Development Board, Liu moved over to the Urban Redevelopment Authority as CEO and Chief Planner in 1989, just in time to halt the ongoing demolition of centrally located ethnic neighbourhoods and heritage sites under the urban redevelopment Concept Plan. He introduced the Conservation Plan the very same year, putting in place conservation policies and practices. Although a fair amount of architectural and cultural heritage had been removed, the Conservation Plan helped to save the rest, designating historic districts like Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam, Singapore River—including Boat Quay and Clarke Quay—as well as residential areas like Emerald Hill, Cairnhill, Blair Plain, and secondary settlements like Joo Chiat and Geylang as areas to be conserved. He also revised the Concept Plan to better cater to and reflect the varied and diverse needs of the Singapore population.

Thanks to Liu’s efforts, the International Union of Architects awarded the Sir Robert Matthew Prize to the Housing and Development Board in 1990 for improvements of the quality of human settlement. The following year, the Urban Redevelopment Authority was awarded the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour for "undertaking a sustained urban redevelopment programme through innovative approaches and land policies and involvement of the private sector".

In 1985, Liu began his official involvement with the arts in Singapore, becoming a member of the steering committee of the Singapore Arts Centre, which would eventually become Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. In 1991, he became a council member of the National Arts Council. He chaired the Arts Housing Committee and implemented the Arts Housing Scheme, an idea that was born out of an unpublished draft plan for the Singapore cultural scene that he helped create for the Concept Plan. This began a successful birth of a scheme that would see many Singapore arts groups and organisations benefit from affordable housing in repurposed buildings. At the same time, Liu also served as a member of the Arts Development Committee of the Council.

In 1992, Liu left the public service to join RSP Architects Planners and Engineers as its director. In 1993, he was awarded the Second ASEAN Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to architecture.

A year later, Liu returned to public office, this time as the chairman of the National Arts Council. As the son of Singapore art pioneer Liu Kang, he came to the role equipped with both a love for the arts and an insight into the Singapore arts scene. He also brought with him an understanding of how the civil service worked. With Liu at the helm, the Council developed its own concept plan for development of the arts in Singapore as well as ground-level policies and practice. These served to promote and grow Singapore artists as well as build wider art audiences through collaborations with other agencies such as the Ministry of Education, Singapore Tourism Board and the People’s Association.

The National Arts Council also began to develop more of a corporate culture, and invested resources in mapping out facts and figures pertaining to Singapore arts that were useful when the Singapore Government formulated the Renaissance City report in 2000. The report’s recommendations were then successfully implemented by the Council, resulting in the establishing of the Singapore Writers’ Festival, Singapore Art Show and the Singapore Biennale.

In Liu’s nine-year term as chairman of the National Arts Council, the Singapore arts scene became more vibrant and mature with an increase in both arts activities and arts audiences. The policies that were put in place also meant that more arts groups and companies were established during this period as well. The Council also broadened its scope, giving more recognition to film as an art form by opening the Cultural Medallion and the Young Artist Award to artists in filmmaking.

Outside of the National Arts Council, Liu also chaired the Censorship Review Committee of the Media Development Authority in 2002, resulting in an easing of censorship guidelines in Singapore. He also acquired customised printmaking equipment from American master printer Ken Tyler’s printing facilities in 2000 for the establishment of the Singapore Tyler Print Institute. Liu served as founding chairman of the Institute, which contributed to the development of contemporary printmaking in Singapore.

Since 2008, he has been the founding chairman of the Centre for Liveable Cities, a role which sees Liu contributing to the formulation of a vision for Singapore as a liveable and sustainable city of the future. He is also currently an adjunct professor at the School of Design and Environment and at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He is also the adjunct professor at Nanyang Technological University and Xiamen University, China.

A fan of Western opera, Liu also regularly attends English theatre performances and concerts by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Since his last painting in 1960, Liu has been making sketches in his architectural notebook of churches he encounters around the world, which he prints on his personal Christmas cards every year.