Queenstown and Commonwealth: A Failed Essay?
One of Singapore’s great successes is her public housing. I thought a photo essay on one of the Housing Development Board’s (HDB) early estates would make for interesting reading so I dutifully made my inquiries with a friend who is an HDB expert and, based on his advice, trotted down to the Queenstown and Commonwealth estates for an exploratory visit.
It was a novel experience—seeing some very early examples of public housing in the form of terraced houses (instead of the now-ubiquitous blocks of flats) was eye-opening—but when I sat down to write about it, I felt that my account of the area’s array of public housing—from house, to walk-up apartment, to seven-storey, then sixteen-storey blocks—was perhaps too perfunctory. Exploring Queenstown and Commonwealth through the lens of early HDB history is quite interesting, but perhaps not interesting enough to transform otherwise mundane tower blocks into a compelling narrative (unless you happen to be keen on public housing history).
L: Public housing in the form of a terraced house C: Public housing in the form of a three-storey walk-up R: Public housing in the form of a seven-storey block ©Wendy Gan 2025
This is often my problem with Singapore: its tale of successful, frictionless modernity engenders polite respect but not passion. Efficiency and convenience do not make for a textured urban environment that engages the eye and moves the heart. To animate the banal requires an intimate and lived-in knowledge of these neighbourhoods, and this I did not have. I was merely a curious outsider looking in.
Still, there were a number of intriguing discoveries: a detour to the Blessed Sacrament Church (1958) for its tent-like roof brought to light a striking architectural beauty; finding a serious coffee roastery and hipster cafe in a humble and homely HDB estate on a muggy morning was akin to stumbling upon an oasis; the purely accidental sighting of a flock of Oriental Pied Hornbills on street lamps was incongruous and surreal. Singapore tends to be bland, but there are small pockets of pleasure that bring moments of delight.
©Wendy Gan 2025
