Moving Stairways to Heaven: How Singapore’s Megachurches Navigate Urban Infrastructures

— Katja Rakow

How do megachurches, with several thousand worshippers per week, find space in a densely populated city-state like Singapore, characterized by limited space? The urban landscape and use of city space are tightly regulated by the government. Fast-growing neo-Pentecostal megachurches, needing large auditoriums for their worship services, often fail to gain permission from the state to build churches that cater to 5,000 or more worshippers (Lee 2010). To address this lack of worship space, these churches have found alternative strategies, such as renting commercial spaces or investing in and owning commercial properties, which they rent to themselves for religious activities for a maximum of two days a week in accordance with the guidelines of the Urban Redevelopment Authority (2010; 2012). Such spaces are often located in commercial centres close to important public transport nodes of the Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) network, such as cinemas in shopping malls or large halls in conference centres or hotels.

Fig. 1: The Star Vista Mall/The Star Performing Arts Centre at Buona Vista MRT Station, Singapore (photo: Shutterstock/1192967218)

One example is The Star Performing Arts Centre (The Star PAC) with a 5,000 seat-auditorium, located above the Star Vista Mall at One-North—“Singapore’s version of San Francisco’s Silicon Valley” (Zachariah 2014). The Star complex, opened in 2012, was originally a joint development by CapitaLand Mall Asia and Rock Productions Pte Ltd, the business arm of New Creation Church. Since 2019, The Star is fully owned by Rock Productions, the commercial branch of the church (Choy 2019). Another example is City Harvest Church’s investment, made through a special purpose investment holding company wholly owned by the church, into Suntec City Convention Centre in Singapore’s business district to build an auditorium with over 7,000 seats (Feng and Sim 2010; Durai 2012). In both cases, churches have established business arms for investments in commercial real estate to create worship space within secular urban infrastructures.

During fieldwork periods in 2013 and 2014 in Singapore, I regularly attended worship services of megachurches like New Creation Church (NCC), then a megachurch with more than 25,000 weekly worship service attendees and one of the biggest megachurches in Singapore, situated in such commercial structures. On my way to The Star Vista Mall/The Star PAC, which serves as NCC’s main worship service venue on Sundays, I started at Tanah Merah MRT station in the Eastern region of the island where I lived. There, I took the escalator to board the East-West line, which took me to Buona Vista MRT station in Queenstown, the central region of Singapore. Upon arrival, another escalator brought me to the street level. I walked down the covered pedestrian walkway connecting the MRT station with The Star complex. The pathway guided me to yet another escalator leading to a second floor outside terrace of the building, from where I entered the mall with shops and restaurants. I proceeded to the next escalator, which brought me to the upper retail level. A small sign next to the escalator announced, “New Creation Church Service (Please proceed to level 3)”. A final long escalator ride brought other worship attendees and me up to the level of The Star Performing Arts Centre, which contains the 5,000-seat auditorium and serves as venue for NCC’s Sunday worship services.

Fig. 2: Sign next to escalator in The Star complex giving directions to New Creation Church service on Sundays (photo: K. Rakow)

Fig. 3: The Star complex at night; the main escalator onto the final level of the auditorium entrance is visible trough the transparant glazing (photo: shutterstock/1319221664)

I have taken similar journeys, including the regular use of many escalators, to another important worship site of NCC at the Marina Bay Sands Ball Rooms in Downtown Singapore or to City Harvest Church’s service at Suntec City Convention Centre at City Hall in the business district. The escalator is one of the urban infrastructural devices that transports masses of commuters, shoppers—and on Sundays—church goers on their way to megachurch worship services in such commercial venues.

In dense urban contexts like Singapore, where at certain nodal points different layers of the city space and infrastructural network intersect—the streets, the MRT-system, pedestrian walkways, buildings of various function (shopping & retail complexes, restaurants, hotels, conference centres, businesses, etc.)—the escalator is an essential architectural feature. It connects the different layers and guides the constant stream of pedestrians, commuters, and shoppers through the network. The escalator, as an “efficient transitional device” (Weiss and Leong 2001, 358), connects street level, below and above ground, inside and outside, as well as different realms of the city. It is at the same time a ubiquitous but inconspicuous feature of urban architecture that allows for a seamless integration of the different infrastructural levels and layers thereby generating “coherence out of fragmentation, unifying greater portions of the city” (Weiss and Leong 2001, 358).

Patented by George Wheeler and trademarked by Charles Seeberger in 1899 as “escalator”, the moving staircase revolutionized the urban experience, primarily by transforming the shopping experience at the beginning of the twentieth century (Elvins 2021, 80). The department store, another essentially urban phenomenon (Parker 2024), was a central conduit for introducing new technologies such as electric lighting, plate-glass windows, steel scaffolding, elevators, escalators, and air-conditioning to shoppers, which then became more broadly adopted as features of urban life (Elvins 2021, 80). The profound impact of the escalator on the retail sector was based on its relation of the surrounding space and how it moved those transported on it through the space. Compared to the classical staircase, shoppers did not need to exert any effort, and compared to the elevator, they did not need to wait their turn and were not crowded in a closed-off space. The escalator allowed for fluid and constant movement of shoppers between floors and standing on the moving staircase allowed for open sightlines to inspect the goods on offer. Retail space below and above street level became as attractive and lucrative as the retail space on the street level, facilitating the horizontal expansion of multilevel stores (Carpenter 2019, 348; Siu 1999, 668).

Escalators have not only transformed shopping, but also public transportation when they become a central feature of subway systems and other urban train lines (Carpenter 2019, 348). From there, they entered other areas of modern city life. While in the early years, the knowledge of how to use the escalator could mark one as an “urban sophisticate” (Elvins 2021, 80), that knowledge has become second nature to today’s city dwellers as escalators became more and more ubiquitous and are viewed as a self-evident part of modern urban life. Urban planners and architects strategically use escalators to direct the flow of people and integrate different parts and functions of city space.

Fig. 4: Escalators at Bencoolen MRT Station Singapore (photo: Shutterstock/1106350079)

Fig. 5: Commuters at Dhoby Ghaut MRT Station Singapore (photo: iStock/474781848)

Escalators link different infrastructural elements like transport, industry, business, and commerce. Since it’s invention, the basic technology of the escalator has not much changed, but in today’s cities where dedifferentiation of certain spaces is the characterizing element and airports and train stations become shopping malls, exhibition halls, and spaces of leisure and experience, the escalator is a ubiquitous architectural element in linking the different functions of the shared spatial configuration—a situation that French geographer Jacques Lévy so aptly captured in the concept of “co-spatiality” (Lévy 2021).

Fig. 6: Jewel Changi Airport is a nature-themed entertainment and retail complex surrounded by and linked to the passenger terminals of Changi Airport, Singapore. The escalator leads directly to the Rain Vortex, the world’s tallest indoor waterfall.  (photo: Shutterstock/1402131020)

A similar situation of “co-spatial intermingling” (Lévy 2021) can be found in Singapore, where megachurches made their home in commercial infrastructures like the shopping mall or conference centre (Chong and Goh 2022), and where escalators provide the infrastructural premise for the effective movement of masses of worshippers to and from their place of religious practice within such commercial infrastructures. As infrastructures are “sociotechnical arrangements” that are also “enabling arrangements”, and thus facilitate other activities and relations, they can also be enlisted in the service of religious activities (Kirby 2024, 4). Thus, what we usually would regard as secular infrastructures can temporarily facilitate religious practice and “infrastructure religion” (Kirby 2024; Burchardt 2023).

The lead architect on The Star Vista/The Star PAC complex, Andrew Bromberg from Aedas, was tasked with designing a building that would serve two different operational needs—one for the retail investor CapitaLand Mall Asia, who would run the mall component with shops and restaurants, and for the other Rock Productions Pte Ltd, the developer of the Performing Arts Centre. A key element of the brief for the architect was the circulation of people through the structure. As NCC was the intended main tenant on Sundays, holding multiple worship services in a row, a complete turnover of all worship attendees within 45 minutes multiple times a day was required, and the structure of the complex had to accommodate this. Ideally, circulation to and from the auditorium of The Star PAC should be entirely intuitive and efficient, while also encouraging worship attendees to to make use of the food and retail facilities before or after services (Nakajima 2013).

Fig. 7: View into the interior of the The Star Vista Mall and the entrance level of The Star PAC (photo: Trevor Patt/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Fig. 8: Pedestriatian pathways and escalators for shoppers and visitors of The Star (photo: Trevor Patt/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

During my fieldwork in 2013 and 2014, each Sunday, NCC held four worship services in succession. The first two services might have been fully booked,[i] while the last two were not necessarily so. Nevertheless, the turnover of visitors between services is enormous. Leaving the service at peak moments on Sunday, the attendees were guided downstairs via a back staircase leading to the retail levels of the building, while the escalators to The Star PAC continuously transported new arrivals for the next worship service upwards. After the service, people might linger in the building using the various cafés, restaurants or open spaces in the facility to “fellowship” with their fellow believers. Fellowshipping here means eating together and spending time together with members of one’s prayer or care group—the small groups that are the backbone of the huge organism that is a megachurch.

As Tateo Nakajima, who was involved in the design and conception of the auditorium of The Star PAC, explains, “Bromberg’s shaping of circulation facilitates the sense of ‘discovery’ for visitors” (Nakajima 2013). The architect used what is referred to as “civic spaces,”— basically open spaces like indoor and outdoor amphitheatres, terraces, circulating pathways and gateway plateaus, which invite visitors to stroll, sit, linger, discover and enjoy the space. Such open structures allow a seamless integration between outside and inside with open sightlines between the two.

Fig. 9: Open spaces, stairs, and escalators at The Star (photo: Trevor Patt/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

The entire complex is designed around circulation. “Visual panoramas (…) of the urban and natural environment (…) and, as importantly, of other panoramas within the facility” (Nakajima 2013) are used as drivers of circulation. Circular pathways and escalators as efficient transitional devices between floors and between the retail component and The Star PAC allow open sightlines and panoramic views within the facility while ensuring effective movement of thousands of visitors and/or worshippers and speedy turnover between Sunday services.

New Creation Church’s inaugural worship services in the auditorium of The Star PAC was the Christmas Service on December 23, 2012, themed “The Star is Born.” During the service, Joseph Prince, senior pastor of NCC, explained the significance of The Star:

Look at the goodness of God. Look at the goodness of your God. God says I am bringing you and your people from the Rock, which is earth bound, to the Star, which is heavenly. The Star is not a place just for Bible knowledge. It is a place where Jesus Christ, the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords will be unveiled.

Joseph Prince, 23 December 2012

Prince’s statement carries several layers of meaning, imbuing the commercial and cultural infrastructure with religious meaning. Firstly, it signifies the transition from the former main auditorium of the church, the Rock auditorium at Suntec City Convention Centre, to the Star PAC. This symbolizes the congregation’s move from the Rock to the Star, from an earthbound to an elevated space, and thus literally closer to heaven. Secondly, it implies that Rock Productions, NCC’s business arm, handles earthly matters such as business deals and developing contracts to provide NCC with a space for worship and learning about Jesus. Lastly, it alludes to the Star of Bethlehem mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, signalling to the Three Magi the place where Jesus can be found. But to hear the Word of God in the heavenly realms of The Star, one must traverse the food and retail levels and engage several escalators first.

Katja Rakow is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Utrecht University (the Netherlands). Her research focuses on megachurches in the US and Singapore with a special interest in material religion, technology, and infrastructures.

References

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[i] Worship services are free of cost, but seats for the two Sunday morning services had to be reserved through New Creation Church’s online system NOAH.

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