ARCHITECTURAL MONOTONY OF SINGAPORE �S PUBLIC HOUSING

Abstract

The subject is on the ubiquitous HDB flats and its effects on the built landscape of Singapore due to its massiveness and immense urban substance. In postulating that the architecture of public housing is of a monotonous quality, the dissertation accounts for what constitutes architectural monotony. Through examining the spatial and aesthetic qualities of Singapore's public housing as what it is today, the dissertation explains why monotony exists through the philosophies and ideals of modernism. This paper posits the HDB project against the modern movement and expounds on Singapore's take on modernism at its own logic and momentum. In the modern city, the driving force of consumerism has led to housing units being treated as a commodity. International modernism is about the erasure of difference, leading to the machine aesthetics and notions of mass production, standardization, replication, productivity and cost-efficiency. Western construction typologies of modernist super-blocks were adopted as models of efficiency. These modernist ideas shaped the way HDB is designed and planned, which resulted in the relentless monotony of the HDB landscape.