Tag: Public Housing

Transforming Old into Gold

Singapore is ageing. Not just its people, but its buildings too. After five decades of accelerated urbanisation, many of the city-state’s once gleaming modern developments — particularly its housing stock ‚ have reached middle age.

Peeling paint, leaking ceilings and creaking infrastructure are some common problems homeowners are increasingly grappling with. The solution for many is to move to a new development by selling their homes en-bloc. It’s no wonder many Singaporeans see their homes as property assets, a shelter built out of money to be cashed out later in life.

While wrecking old(er) buildings for gold seems pragmatic and even inevitable for many, it also reflects the lack of imaginative alternatives in Singapore.

➜ Read the full column in CUBES #94 (Jan/Feb/Mar 2019)

Mosaic Memories: Building a Singapore Playground

Originally researched and written for the National Museum of Singapore’s The More We Get Together: Singapore’s Playgrounds 1930-2030 (2018) exhibition. It resulted in the above installation conceptualised with Atelier HOKO.

A variety of local construction materials were used to produce the distinctive playgrounds that a generation of Singaporeans grew up with during the 1970s and 1980s. Dig deeper and discover the building blocks of these playgrounds!

Hume Pipes
From a tortoise shell to the body of a giraffe, such circular concrete pipes were commonly used in early playground designs. Typically used in sewage systems, the Hume pipe’s smooth surfaces made them safe to play on, but more importantly, this material helped contractors more easily realise Mr Khor Ean Ghee’s playgrounds. In the 1970s, the local construction industry was not as developed so Mr Khor designed his playgrounds around these readymade pipes that are named after its Australian inventors. Their company, Hume Industries, set up a factory along Bukit Timah in 1923 and the pipes used in local playgrounds were most likely manufactured there.

Sandpits
Unlike many early playgrounds which had concrete flooring, HDB began building its playgrounds in 10-by-10 metres boxes filled with sand to cushion children when they jumped off play structures or if they accidentally fell. This loose, granular substance could also be played with, and children would build sandcastles or simply dug into this tactile material. Many of the sandpits also had large ledges that parents would sit on while keeping an eye on their children playing. From the nineties, sandpits gave way to synthetic rubber flooring. This new material of the time was thought to be more colourful, and unlike sand, they did not conceal litter or hazards such as broken glass.

Terrazzo
This weather-worthy material was a more durable alternative in Singapore’s tropical climate, compared to earlier playgrounds built with stainless steel and timber. Made out of chips of marble or granite set in concrete that was polished to give a smooth surface, terrazzo was also safe for children to play on. While this solid material gave rise to the sculptural forms of local playgrounds, they also made them less flexible especially when compared to new proprietary playground that became widely available in the nineties. Typically made out of plastic, these new playgrounds could be more easily shaped for different types of play and was convenient to replace when damaged. This made them the playgrounds of choice for a new generation.

Mosaic Tiles
They gave a generation of playgrounds its distinctive look, but these small square tiles were picked for very practical reasons. Early playgrounds made out of concrete pipes and metal structures required a regular coat of marine paint to ensure they looked presentable. This became unnecessary when Mr Khor Ean Ghee began using brightly-coloured mosaic tiles in his playgrounds, on the suggestion of a contractor. His colleagues who maintained the housing estate loved that this saved their time and money in keeping the playground safe and clean. Besides playgrounds, mosaic tiles were also commonly used then on the walls and floors in apartments, as well as public furniture installed at void decks!

Rubber Tyres
Together with ropes and nets, rubber tyres offered a mobile element to the largely static playground designs. They were safer and more durable to use as seats on swings compared to the previous timber panels that would splinter and rot in our tropical weather. The impact of being hit by an elastic rubber swing compared to a timber one was also lesser too. Rubber tyres were also then produced locally, one of the many products put out by Singapore’s lively rubber manufacturing industry in the 1970s. Starting with this material that comes from the latex of a tropical plant, or created synthetically, factories would create all sorts of consumer and industrial goods, including rubber bands, cushions and shoes.

The World’s Most Livable Cities: Singapore (Housing)

As nations struggle to house their rapidly growing urban populations, Singapore offers a promising solution with its profusion of innovative high-rise, high-density housing “estates,” as is the local parlance. Today, over 80 percent of the city-state’s resident population lives in public housing.

Key to this success is the Housing & Development Board (HDB), the nation’s public housing agency, which was set up in 1960 to tackle the shortage of housing and clearly overcrowded slums. HDB has since evolved from resettling Singaporeans who once lived in overcrowded villages to catering to the lifestyles of its now 5.5 million inhabitants.

In the last decade, public housing has gone from utilitarian rectangular blocks formulated by faceless public servants to stylish complexes designed by top local architecture firms, such as WOHA Architects, which completed their SkyVille@Dawson in July. Containing 960 units of a variety of apartment types and sporting tropical landscaping and extensive communal spaces, the three-tower scheme humanizes the HDB housing blocks of yesteryear.

SkyVille@Dawson is just one example of HDB enlisting the private sector to create more distinctive public housing. “The concepts that we have tested out in Dawson are also being implemented in other new housing projects in different ways,” says Dr. Cheong Koon Hean, HDB’s chief executive officer. “Our new estates will be greener and more garden-like, to provide a more conducive living environment for residents.”

Against this backdrop of progressive public housing for low- and middle-income residents, Singapore’s developers have turned to starchitects to differentiate their profit-driven projects. Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, and Toyo Ito have all recently designed signature high-rise luxury residences. OMA and Ole Scheeren’s Interlace and Moshe Safdie’s soon-to-be-completed Sky Habitat offer further examples. Yet, Safdie is discerning: “Very few countries at this point are building housing by the government for the people as Singapore does. I don’t think there is any country like that.”

Read the complete report at Metropolis