High-rise housing may dominate Singapore’s skyline, but its homes have traditionally been more grounded. Dream Spaces brings you access to these remarkable properties, retracing their origins and transformation. Each episode explores a housing type and living ideal — the shophouse, the kampong house, the black and white bungalow, historic mansions as well as multi-generational living — to learn how they have been transformed for modern lifestyles, and continue to influence the shape and form of the Singapore house today.
The now-defunct Baharuddin Vocational Institute was Singapore’s first formal school for design. Justin Zhuang looks at how the institute laid the foundation for the design industry here.
I’m typing this essay on a laptop in need of repair. The battery lasts for no more than two hours. The speakers go silent after hours of use. But aside from these defects, the laptop still works as when I first bought it eight years ago.