Talks on Tap #5: One Building, Many Lives - The Urbanist Singapore (Yong Min Ho) & Theophilus Kwek
🍻 Talks on Tap #5
One Building, Many Lives: Urban Amnesia, Memory & Storytelling in the City with The Urbanist Singapore (Yong) & Theophilus Kwek
Singapore rebuilds itself every generation. Her plots are cleared, renamed, and reconstructed until the layered histories beneath them become invisible. This constant renewal often comes at the cost of memory: buildings that once held decades of civic, cultural, and personal life disappear with little trace, and the people who passed through them, especially those without institutional power or public profile, and are often the first to be forgotten. There is a need to explore how storytelling, research, and heritage practice can hold onto what redevelopment erases, and to ask whose histories get preserved and whose vanish.
This session explores urban amnesia through two very different practices of remembering. Yong Min Ho, the urban heritage explorer behind The Urbanist Singapore, resurfaces the buried histories of buildings and neighbourhoods through archival research and short-form storytelling. Theophilus Kwek's Odeon: An Ode traces one plot on North Bridge Road — cabaret, cinema, construction site, office tower — through the intertwined lives of a migrant construction worker and a future President of Singapore, using creative nonfiction to fill the silences the archive leaves behind. Together, they will unpack what it takes to remember a place once its physical traces are gone, and what role storytelling plays in deciding which memories survive demolition.
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🔍 About Talks on Tap
Talks on Tap is a public initiative by Urban Kakis that aims to make urban theory and topics more accessible and engaging.
Talks on Tap #5 is presented in partnership with Ethos Books, an independent Singapore literary publisher founded in 1997 by Fong Hoe Fang to lend voice to diverse and emerging writers and foster a thriving local literary culture. Ethos Books publishes literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry primarily by Singapore writers, including Theophilus Kwek's Odeon: An Ode, and has published acclaimed voices from Alfian Sa'at and Cyril Wong to Teo You Yenn and Cherian George.
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🎤 Featured Speakers
Yong Min Ho is a heritage educator and the founder of The Urbanist Singapore, where he brings Singapore’s history, architecture and urban landscape to life through digital storytelling and heritage experiences. With over 90,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, he has made heritage accessible to a new generation through his social media content and curated walks. Yong’s expertise has since been sought after for events including Singapore HeritageFest and Singapore Design Week,while his work has been featured in major media outlets such as The Straits Times, Zaobao, Channel NewsAsia and CNA 938 Live.
Theophilus Kwek has published five collections of poetry, most recently Commonwealth (Carcanet Press, 2025). In 2023, he was the youngest writer and first Singaporean to be awarded the Cikada Prize by the Swedish Institute, for poetry that "defends the inviolability of life". His creative nonfiction debut, Odeon, is published by Ethos Books in 2026.
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Event Details
🗓️ 24 September 2026 (Thu), 7PM SGT
📍Monk's Brew Club, 57 East Coast Road, Singapore 428773
🎟️ $19 per pax (inclusive of a choice of alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage)
❗️ For payment, please click on “event terms” in the sign up form to access the QR code for PayNow!
The fee helps to cover venue hire and to support a local business. We want everyone to feel welcome, so if the fee is a barrier, just drop us a note at hello@urbankakis.com and we'll make it work.
Accessibility Note: Please note that the venue is located in a shophouse and is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible. Toilets are available on Level 2, and there are also quiet spaces onsite for anyone who may need them.
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🗓️ Programme Rundown
7:00PM Settling In & Drinks
7:20PM Welcome & Introductions
7:30PM Speaker Sharing
8:10PM Moderated Q&A Session
8:45PM On the Rocks – engage with key provocations through discussion!
8:50PM Drinks & Mingle
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Talks on Tap turns everyday nightlife spaces into civic third spaces, where young people explore big ideas about our cities, one drink at a time.