SHOPHOUSE TO COFFEESHOP - ARCHITECTURE THE ENABLER OF A NEW COMMERCIAL AND CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN 'HAINANESE STREETS'

Abstract

Drinking coffee was never part of Singapore Chinese culture. The local culture of drinking coffee was only introduced by early Singapore Hainanese coffee business in shophouses within ‘Hainanese Streets’ . Originally, these shophouses were never specifically designed for the operation of Hainanese coffee business. The coffeeshops of today are in actuality, the final stage of physical metamorphosis of the once generic shophouses that littered the ‘Hainanese Streets’. We can trace a physical metamorphosis involving three typological phases starting from shophouses, to the hybrid coffee-shophouses and culminating with today’s coffeeshops. Right alongside this building metamorphosis, we can also track the three stages of evolution in the Hainanese coffee business namely Introduction, Adaptation and Maximization. Research studies branching from an architectural perspective of the Hainanese coffee business is scarce and most of the ‘Hainanese Streets’ coffeeshop have either been demolished or experienced a changed of use without leaving any written records. This dissertation would like to serve as a body of knowledge for readers to have an understanding of the information of architecture at different levels- building, commercial and cultural. It also aims to highlight the relationship between Hainanese coffee business and the transformation process from shophouse to coffeeshop typology.