OUR VERTICAL VERNACULAR: A STUDY ON THE EVOLUTION OF HIGH RISE LIVING IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The housing situation in Singapore has progressed since its early days of vernacular low-rise villages to the modernist high-rise housing blocks of today. To date, over 80% of Singapore’s residents live in HDB high-rise housing estates. With over half the population having spent the majority of their lives in high-rise apartments and the younger generation currently growing up in them, it could be said that the high rise is Singapore’s new vernacular. Since then, it has become an important task for HDB to establish a strong community with a sense of identity and belonging within such housing estates, akin to that which is found in olden vernacular villages.

This paper asks the question: can a new form of vertical planning arising from the informal and vernacular planning of public spaces be used to foster a strong community in HDB high-rise housing estates. Through lessons learnt from the case studies of informal vertical communities and past vernacular villages in Singapore, this paper would then further investigate how a new form of vertical vernacular could take place in the planning of HDB housing estates.

Qualitative methods would be applied in investigating local case studies in order to understand the success and/or failure of current spatial practices. Such methods would also be used to investigate other case studies of the informal and vernacular in order to draw comparisons between the two. Surveys would also be conducted in order gather resident feedback regarding the usage patterns of the communal spaces within the various estates that they live in.