The Modern Touch: Interior Design and Modernisation in Post-Independence Singapore

Abstract

Introduction From its beginnings in 1960, Singapore's Housing Development Board (HDB) has been the main provider of housing for Singaporeans and nowadays accommodates well over 85% of the population in`owned' (long-term leasehold) flats. Constrained by land shortages, committed to the pragmatics of efficient delivery, and no doubt influenced by global trends in mass-housing provision, it enthusiastically adopted the modernist highrise as the architectural type for its post-independence programme of universal housing provision. The HDB has routinely reflected with pride on the part which it, and its housing programme, have played in the making of modern Singapore. For example, the HDB's main office, dubbed`The Hub', has always boasted a small museum space showcasing the institution's achievements. In the HDB's current headquarters, the museum is part of an extensive display space called`The Gallery' which uses a series of`before and after' interior recreations to tell the story of the HDB's role in providing`homes for the people'. Visitors are led past`slum',`squatter', and`kampung' interiors, on to the modern interiors of the 1960s highrises, and then to contemporary innovations like the entirely prefabricated`plug-on' bathroom. The curatorial sensibility of this display lays somewhere between that of the museum diorama and the show home and, indeed, visitors can move seamlessly from the interior recreations of the museum space to a series of full-scale, fully decorated interior layouts of HDB flats currently on offer to prospective buyers. (1) The centrality of these displays at The Hub hint at the special role which the interior and interior decoration have played in the housing-provision story of Singapore.

The High‐Rise Home: Verticality as Practice in London

“…Moving beyond the focus on the high‐rise as housing, a small number of studies are beginning to explore the high‐rise as home (e.g. Jacobs and Cairns, ; De Vos, ; Ghosh, ). This understands the high‐rise as a domestic environment that is intensely meaningful to residents, and important in identity and belonging (Blunt and Dowling, ).…”

Negotiating the Modern Cross-Class “Model Home”: Domestic Experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

“…Thus, the paper expands on a body of work that looks at the articulation of architecture and home (Attfield, , 2000(Attfield, , 2002Blunt, 2008;Busch, 1999;Chapman, 1998;Dowling, 2008;Jacobs & Cairns, 2008;Jerram, 2006;Llewellyn, 2004aLlewellyn, , 2004bLloyd & Johnson, 2004;Miller, 2001b;Munro, 2013;Rapoport, 1982;Ravetz & Turkington, 1995), with a novel focus on the spatiality of this articulation.…”

“…Receiving the 'model home' involves a process of negotiation between 'ideal' and 'lived' homes. In this negotiation, which represents a mediation with wider society (Gorman-Murray, 2007;Jacobs & Cairns, 2008;Wright, 1991), prevailing narratives of home are constantly 'recast through home-making practices' (Blunt & Dowling, 2006, p.89).…”

Gracious: Modern living in post-independence Singapore

“…By the early 1970s, there were growing efforts among people to invest in luxury decoration inside their public housing flats, softening the functionalist rooms and creating a higher sense of material wealth. As Jacobs and Cairns (2008) describe, from 1972 the HDB published the magazine Our Home, which gave professional advice and DIY solutions for renovating flats. As the nation stabilised, the lure of gracious living was its promise of something more than shelter.…”