Block 335B

Portrait of a Singapore HDB Residential Building

Photo ID：SIN0498. A view from the basement of blk335B.

    It was the fascination of humanism and documentary photography that eventually turned my lenses to Block 335B, an ordinary yet unique Singapore residential building.  As a travel photographer beautiful scenery photos are my primary butters and breads,  when I was revisiting Singapore in January and April 2005 naturally I had scheduled to shoot those tourism hotspots.  Well,  I ended up spending most of my time hanging on the China Town Smith street, where block 335B is located.

Photo ID：SIN0499。the location of block 335B (red circled)

Singapore is one of the smallest yet best organized countries in the world.   I lived here from 1997 to 2002. To my experience it is very hard if not possible to spot a homeless on the streets , implying there must be a good housing program whereby all Singaporeans are well sheltered.  There is.  90% of Singaporeans live in the apartments built by HDB. Residents are subsidized to buy HDB flats.  This  United-Nation-awarded housing scheme, coincide with the way big things are done here, is carried out by a statutory body, HDB,  Housing and Development Board of Singapore.

For years I have been wondering a simple question: what is Singapore really? What I want is a faithfully record of the life of ordinary Singaporean. A perfect sample was found at the central of China town, Apt Block 335B, a 25-storey HDB building just few hundreds meters away from the bustling CBD area.  

Perfect Singapore life sample you say? Yes:

1，this is a HDB block, where majority of local people live.  Built in early 1970s, 335B itself was among the first fruits of Singapore government housing scheme.

2，the unique structure of 335B  allows  its resident to literally live an entire life without stepping out of the building:

a, there is a bazaar (wet market) in the basement provisioning everyday life;   

b, there are hundreds of shops located on the ground floor, selling everything from wedding to funerary supplies;

c, a food court on the 2nd floor, one of the largest in Singapore;

d, hundreds of households from the 3rd floor up.

3，with many old colonial-age houses around, 335B located in the place where the very first batch of immigrants (Chinese, Indians and westerners) landed in Singapore.

4，the location of 335B is the heart of Singapore tourism. Few tourists would not visit the nearby Sri Mariamman Indian temple(1827) and China Town, therefore this Portrait of A Singapore HDB Building constitutes  an important chapter of my upcoming Singapore travel feature.

By all means 335B is a valuable photographic subject. I abandoned my original photographic schedule and visited 335B many times. The first stage of this 335B Portrait of Singapore project was near finished, that is, to generally document 335B and its adjacent areas.

The second stage of 335B project will be much tougher. I was thinking to visit and photograph at least 20 families of this block, with questionnaire which i have yet to design one. I am not sure how many residents would allow me to take photos of their houses, most likely i will have to knock the doors one by one.

The 335B project may go on endlessly. Wouldn't it be interesting to revisit the families 5 or 10 years later? I see this 335B project very much like an micro-anthropology thing. I myself just don't have that much time to do it alone, most of the time I am busy shooting outside Singapore. Here I am calling all Singapore resident photographers, and any party especially university social study fellows, if you are interested in the project, please drop me a mail yangfei999999@hotmail.com , together let's see how should this 335B project be carried out.

The following images are taken in and around block 335B, for your kind reference.