It may seem odd that decentralization should be a driver on such a small island. But as part of the strategy to spread density, relieve the pressure on both private and public transport and generally prevent Singapore from becoming an environmental pressure cooker, the government is constantly developing new and self-sufficient towns that complement a growing suburbanization. One result has been a more focused idea of urban living, especially among the younger generation.
The Bamboo Curtain House (page 162) opens up to the outside, as seen in the kitchen with its courtyard and greenery.
Again, this is impacting the direction of residential design, with people wanting to be part of the action and yet still having their own private refuge. For one market sector, conservation houses or other existing houses remain desirable, partly because of their proximity to urban attractions and partly because of their potential for interior redevelopment while retaining the aura of history and culture. For a less affluent part of the market, the resale HDB market is increasingly attractive, especially if it is in or near fashionable and well-located precincts.
We also need to consider the new kinds of clients who are emerging and whose residential requirements are different from an earlier generation. These include single people, couples without children or with only one or two children. There is also the expatriate market, not all of whom earn huge salaries but who have their own preferences. The Cranes (page 200) is one example of a possible new direction in catering to this sector of the market, while the Watten Residences (page 178) and The Green Collection (page 184) are two other distinctive terrace housing models that provide many of the amenities of a landed house but with cost offsets.
Models like these also represent new propositions for a sustainable balance between privacy and community. In Singapore, as elsewhere in tropical Southeast Asia, the relationship of privacy to community remains the single most important theme. If anything, the issue of balancing the two is even more important now than it ever was with the diversification of lifestyles reflecting the growth of cities and the continual development of a new world economic order.
Traditionally, of course, the issue has been how to attain a degree of privacy in a strongly communalist society. But the issue is now more nuanced. This more complex view of how privacy and community should coexist is well put by Tan Ji Ken, who worked with Mark Wee on The Cranes. In a note on the project he writes, ‘Privacy is an under-estimated catalyst for community. It creates security and a sense of having something of one’s own to fuel the courage and respite needed for productive and meaningful communal engagement. All the best community platforms have privacy settings.’
Another feature of Guz Wilkinson’s work is the tropical garden, which cools the house. Here in The Coral House (page 86), the garden is elevated off the ground.
For our lives to be sustainable, we need both privacy and community for a sense of belonging. At the very least, being part of a community helps us to shape our values and to define who we are. Historically, however, the emphasis has been on how we as individuals or as families can achieve a reasonable degree of privacy and refuge from the larger world without losing the benefits of belonging to the collective. The benefits are contingent on each of us bringing something to the table.
Arguably, we live in a world which is becoming more communal, more connected. With digital technology, it can seem as though there is no private space left and that we are all living in one gigantic public space. This begs the question: how meaningful is this connectedness, how genuinely engaged are we? Tan Ji’s point is important—productive and meaningful engagement in communal life is only possible when we approach it with the secure sense of self, which is generated in the private domain. In other words, it is a two-way street; we need both as privacy and community feed one another.
The opportunity to be together and yet separate is the big theme in tropical Southeast Asian residential design. For Singapore, it is especially crucial and key to the country’s sustainable future.
In this book, I offer a selection of projects ranging from free-standing houses to terrace houses and multi-residential projects to high-rise multi-residentials. Each is an example of one or more of the three key components of sustainability: environmental, social and economic. At the same time, the houses reflect a variety of changes taking place in modern Singapore.
My argument has been that sustainability is the key to Singapore’s future. In that sense, the high-quality luxury homes gathered together in this book illustrate how residential design is both contributing to and reflecting that sustainable agenda.
Footnote
1 Leyla Acaroglu and Liam Fennessy, ‘Rapid Adjustments Required: How Australian Design Might Contend with a Carbon Constrained Economy’, paper presented to the agideas International Research Conference, 22 May 2012.
2 ‘Material Matters’, Indesign No. 56, March/May 2014, p. 193.
3 More than 74 per cent of the Singaporean population is ethnically Chinese, of whom over 34 per cent claim to be Buddhist, 10 per cent Taoist and 16 per cent Christian. However, Confucianism acts as a unifying ethical force, best exemplified by a powerful governmental ideology of social responsibility and inclusiveness that places social values above individual preferences.
4 Roxana Waterson, The Living House: An Anthropology of Architecture in South-East Asia, Singapore: Tuttle reprint, 2009; first published Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. xv.
5 The term was originally used in William Lim and Tan Hock Beng’s pioneering study, Contemporary Vernacular: Evoking Tradition in Asian Architecture, Singapore: Select Books, 1998.
6 Waterson, The Living House, p. xvi.
TANGLIN HILL HOUSE
ECO:ID ARCHITECTS
Long section.
‘Our brief to Boon was a very simple one: Give us a space that we can grow old in and where our friends can come visit in their shorts and flip-flops without ever feeling out of place. But, at the same time, a place where the artist, if he were to visit our house, will not feel that we have disrespected his work.’—OWNER
From across the pool, the house seems to dissolve into the landscape.
Well known for its high quality hospitality design, eco:id Architects restricts its residential work to clients for whom it feels a close affinity. It reminds me of the novel Elective Affinities by the great German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which takes its name from the theory of chemical affinities whereby certain compounds only interact with each other under specific circumstances. In the case of architect Sim Boon Yang and his client, there were a number of affinities between them, the strongest being art. Both collect art, but art of a certain kind, art which is ‘neither ostentatious nor superfluous’, in the words of the client, art predominantly from Asia and art with a delicate balance between the aesthetic and the functional.
The