HDB

Photo from moviexclusive.com
Since it's the week of National Day, a post on HDB is quite in order.

Singapore Architect had a great feature on HDBs(probably because there was so much theory thrown around and according to this, I am a theory slut)-the manifestation of Corbusier's utopic ideals of town-planning. Am not sure where this came from:- definitely inspired by that article in Singapore Architect. The first paragraph doesn't seem characteristic of me- I hope I didn't lift chunks off the article- although that wouldn't be characteristic of me either.

Le Corbusier was a great believer and proponent of town planning-the idea revolved around housing people in sanitary, regimented high-rise towers, set far apart in a parklike landscape. While the clinical, utopian idea of La Ville Radieuse(there was nothing radiant or faintly poetic about the inflexible, almost draconian concept about the place) in Chandigarh failed miserably, it seems to have found root in Singapore in the form of the government subsidised housing, HDB.



It could have been that the architecture and town planning of the city was simply an extension of the political philosophy of the country but HDB, and the idea of town planning on the whole, has succeeded extremely well in Singapore. So, while the megaprojects in the US, inspired by Corbusier are being dismantled, the Americans having found the sense of anomie and disorientation inspired by regimented public housing and vast urban renewal schemes to be too great, Singaporeans have taken to the idea a whole lot better. Everything is planned-from the excellent public transportation system, to the number of trees around every block. Young urbanites today, short on cash but big on inspiration, are turning their HDB dwellings into swanky apartments to rival the predictable and 'mass produced' interiors of condominium living.

From providing a sense of home ownership, social control through the imposed system of racial quotas to inspiring generations of local filmmakers(ref: Royston Tan's 4:30 to Eric Khoo's 12 storeys).