Although obsessed with the ‘problem’ of clutter, the HDB décor advice did not consistently promote the elimination of ornament. Indeed, ornament was seen to have the power to deliver to domestic interiors a sense of ‘personal touch’ and ‘atmosphere’, in a manner that resonated quite remarkably with the very nineteenth-century European interior that modernism shunned. Our Home articles encouraged residents to create, in modest and controlled ways, a range of theatrical and phantasmagorical effects. Many of the interiors showcased, including those praised for their use of neutral tones and management of clutter, used ornaments, wall and floor finishes and soft furnishings such as shag pile rugs, plush carpeting, ‘big comfy armchairs’, gold damask curtains, chandeliers, even Victorian look furniture. Take Dorothy Khoo’s flat, which aspired to ‘have something different from the usual’:

‘… home decorations include carved wood statuettes, ancient vases, Chinese porcelain  – most of which are prized collections of older generations. To counter-balance these antiques of the Orient, decoupages, attractive pictures and a gilt-frame mirror adorn the walls’ [41].

Asian ornament was commonly featured and articles described flats containing ornamental objects such as a bamboo lamp from Jakarta, a bed in a ‘pseudo-Chinese’ style, a Namdas Kashmiri rug, a painting of Malay women, Chinese calligraphic hangings, batik paintings and woodcarving. A good example was the flat of the Ng family whose ‘exquisite display cabinet’ presents a ‘fascinating range of bric-a-brac that have made it to the [their] flat across continents and oceans’, including a giant lobster from Indonesia, a clay dancer from India, and a Taiwanese ornamental umbrella.

Another interior that repeatedly appeared in the pages of Our Home belonged to an advertisement by Credit POSB, a state-run bank which offered a ‘Renovation Loan Scheme’ for residents to re-decorate their homes. Again the interior in this advertisement combines certain features of a modernist aesthetic (white walls most notably) along with a floor-to-ceiling photo-montage of a wintry landscape, a mosaic coffee table and lamp with Thai motifs, and a painting in traditional Balinese style [image_7] . It is clear from these examples, that the Asian-ness of these flats is not an expression of some intrinsic cultural trait, struggling to find expression against a modernist architecture. Rather, it is a regionally-inflected taste culture embedded in the logics of consumption and within which originary cultural traits jostle with the artefacts and atmospheres of other Asias.

Indeed by the 1980s the way in which these eclectically ‘oriental’ interiors are described is almost oblivious to any design constraints that may exist by virtue of the architecture. In an article explicitly entitled ‘The flat where East meets West’ [42] [image_8] we are introduced to a householder who has deployed ‘the best of both worlds’. Having ‘his roots in his past’ amateur artist Mr Leong used ‘oriental themes in his works of art’ and chose ‘oriental ornaments to decorate his flat’. But what this article dubbed as the ‘orientalism’ of this décor, was set against ‘Western furnishings’: a ‘comfortable … sofa’ and ‘a glass display cabinet’. In 1987 this theme was revisited by way of another flat in which there was ‘a comfortable mix of many cultures’: samurai sword, Chinese paintings, Italian dining setting, and ‘knick-knacks from Europe’. According to the article, this worldly display was less a product of ‘design’ than simply assembling the varied wedding gifts bestowed upon this household’s by its well-travelled relatives and friends. As the article concludes: ‘After a hard days work at the office, the Tohs are only too glad to come home to their comfortable haven with its distinctive min ‘n’ match décor of East and West’ [43].

We have already discussed the problem of storage in the earlier HDB interiors, but storage is a system that is intended to deal with items that fall out of use (either temporarily or permanently). The ornament requires a different structure of housing for as long as it is on display its visual work in producing atmospheric effect is never done. While Singaporean housing emerged out of a modernism indifferent to display and ornament, the ‘space sensible’ display cabinet became an often featured item in Our Home. Through these articles it is clear that the Singaporean interior was full of collections and curios of various kinds, all of which needed to be displayed. Mrs Meng, for example, chose to put her ‘collection of odd pieces of beautiful crockery and pottery’ in a ‘teak sideboard’ and a ‘glass-fronted showcase in blackwood’ [44]. Mr Wong, whose bespoke furniture we have already seen, elected to use a wall unit that not only hid clutter, but also displayed ‘all the living room essentials like a TV set, stereo, books and curios’ [45]. This hybrid system of storage and display was aptly expressed through an article entitled, ‘Hide and Show’. The article features a kitchen renovation based on built-ins which could be used, on the one hand, to hide unpleasant-to-look-at kitchen utensils and ‘odds and ends’, but on the other hand, showcase those items one would ‘love to show’ on an ‘elegant display shelf’ [46].

In the final years of the interior decoration articles in Our Home, the drift toward an ever-more ornamented interior reminiscent of the very European interiors modernism deplored appeared almost complete. In an article entitled “The Continental style” [47] a home was featured in which, on entering, the visitor was ‘transported at once to the atmosphere of a house in a small town in Europe’ and brought back ‘to the times of King Louis the fourteenth’. The owner, Mr Chan, himself imported European furniture, no doubt servicing a growing local market. In another home featured we encountered the very first interior that was acknowledged not be to be the product the creativity of its owners but the ‘Italian-style’ vision of a ‘renovation contractor’ [48]. But perhaps the stylistic destiny of the Singapore interior is best summarised by the last of the décor features to appear in the final edition of Our Home, published in August/September 1989. In a feature entitled ‘Vast Variations’ [49], two HDB homes are featured: one based on a ‘hi-tech’ minimalism but incorporating the ‘folly’ of a reproduction London phone booth; the other a heavily ornamented interior that made it ‘just like a cottage housed in a HDB flat’ [image_9]. While modernity’s progressive drive seems to be elegantly and effortlessly demonstrated throughout the urban spaces of this city state – in civic and commercial architecture, public squares and precincts, transportation systems, and service infrastructures – here in the HDB domestic interior we find a more telling, dialectical image of Singapore’s modernity in which past and future are locked together in an anachronistic embrace.