PURSUING A COMPLETE IMPLEMENTATION OF PRE-FABRICATED BUILDING COMPONENTS IN HDB PUBLIC HOUSING

Abstract

As the world progresses and urbanises, there is a strain that is faced by all the nations worldwide in terms of socio-cultural, economic, political and environmental. The capacity for a particular city to sustain masses of people from diverse backgrounds is now a challenge. As such many of these countries try to find solutions that could best solve these housing problems. Singapore is a country well known for its rapid rise in prosperity and stability. Its public housing projects in terms of the policies and infrastructure has been successful in mitigating the housing problems since the early 1960s (Lam, 1988). As such, the strategy of building HDB houses using solely prefabricated components will be discussed here. This strategy can help solve issues in the long run and the short run and is strongly tied to the fields of architecture. Taking the cues from the old masters such as Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, where it all starts off from the planning of habitats, public housing and development has to be re-visited and refined even further. This dissertation acknowledges pre-fabricated housing as a topic that is challenging and has been discussed repeatedly. This paper sees pre-fabrication as a solution in meeting the high demands of public housing in Singapore and it attempts to find out why HDB has not achieved a public housing development which is 100% pre-fabricated.