As part of its programme of universal housing provision Singapore’s Housing Development Board (HDB) distributed interior design advise to its residents. Through a series of regular articles appearing in the HDB publication Our Home [image_1], readers were presented with stories that showed how selected HDB residents decorated their newly acquired highrise flats. Our Home was distributed free to all HDB tenants between 1972 and 1989. Through the interior design advice given in its pages it is possible to glimpse how practices of collective and individual consumption come together through the HDB’s programme of housing provision. And through these articles it is also possible to see past the uniform exteriors of these modernist highrises to glimpse the variable expressions of interior styling. In these emergent Singaporean interiors amateur interpretations of interior style mixed with idealised notions of modern decor, freedoms of expression jostled with state regulatory frameworks, and efforts to encourage domestic creativity rubbed against the economic benefits and costs of expanding home-related consumption.

Understanding what highrise interiors might have been like in post-independence Singapore is greatly assisted by the interior décor articles appearing in Our Home. They feature actual interiors created by HDB residents and as such the magazine offers a unique record not only of how long-gone Singaporean interiors looked, but also, through its reportage of resident’s explanations of their choices, an insight into how residents themselves engaged with the practices of interior decoration. Admittedly, the homes and residents featured in Our Home would have conformed to official ideals for HDB interiors, such that these residents and their flats could operate illustratively. But while this filter creates a limit in terms of these articles offering a window onto the full range of home-making practices of the time, it also brings clearly into view the recursive relationship between the ‘ideal’ (discursive) home and the ‘real’ (practiced) home. [1]

From 1972 through to the late 1989 the HDB published Our Home as bi-monthly magazine that was delivered free to every HDB household in Singapore and available for purchase at a minimal cost by non-HDB readers See Table 1).

Table 1: Circulation figures for Our Home for years data available. Source: Our Home.

The inaugural issue of Our Home [image_2] magazine begins with a clear statement of purpose:

 ‘“Our Home” is about you and others in HDB housing estates. You will get to know how much other people are like you, how other residents live, their problems and how to overcome them and about their achievements … what matters is that we all make that community something to be proud of, a healthy environment for our children…. “Our Home” can help us all build a better home!’ [2] .

Despite significant circulation numbers, there is no known study of the readership patterns for this magazine. Anecdotal evidence suggests it is likely that, as time went by, residents thought it increasingly superfluous to the way they lived in their increasingly familiar HDB-provided homes. Be that as it may, the magazine – and specifically the articles on interior design – offers a unique window on to the fine-grained detail of living in HDB housing, and specifically the complex dialogue between HDB aspirations and those of the emerging ‘home-owning democracy’ its housing programme aimed to produce.

Among other things, this magazine offered practical advice on how to live ‘properly’ in new highrise environment, through articles with titles like ‘Making it a home sweet home’ [3], ‘Be a good neighbour’ [4], ‘More than just a roof’ [5]. The magazine brought to its readership popular accounts of the new kinds of living problems posed by the high-density, highrise life, ranging from the dangers of littering from a height (‘killer litter’) [image_3], to the mis-use of shared balcony space, how to behave in relation to lifts [image_4], to the inappropriate time to hang wet clothes or dripping mops from one’s window drying poles [image_5]. In relation to these problems they suggested more ‘neighbourly’ codes of practice, as well as reminding readers of actions and uses that were specifically against the rules. This instructive discourse reminds us that the re-housed Singaporean was seen by the state as a novice in relation to modern housing and living, such that their mode of inhabitation required direct shaping and regulating so they could maximise the benefit of highrise re-housing. In this sense the HDB was actively constructing and promulgating what Rose [6] has usefully called ‘repertoires of conduct’ for highrise living. This educative discourse was underscored by a range of explicit regulations that specified punishable offences, as well as surveillance technologies that ensured compliance.

As noted, part of the HDB’s attention in Our Home was dedicated to the way the interior of flats might look. Advice on this appeared routinely in a series of regular articles (often under the thematic heading ‘Décor’) from 1972-1982 inclusive and from then on as occasional features. In this sub-genre of article the relationship between the governing of conduct and cultivation of taste through home-based consumption practises is clearly evident. In OurHome the matter of ‘making’ the interior of the flat was variously described as ‘interior décor’ / ‘decoration’ / ‘design’, ‘home improvement’ or simply ‘renovation’. The message about what to do with the interior of one’s flat was never communicated in the abstract, or by way of non-HDB homes. All articles featured the efforts of existing HDB residents who had done their interiors themselves, offering photographs of their interiors, and lengthy quotes of these resident’s ‘design’ strategies. The articles are committed to a D-I-Y model of home decoration, although there is a self-conscious conversation with the professionalized field of ‘interior design’. For example, one of the earliest of these articles invited readers of Our Home [7] to look inside the interior of a ‘decorator’s flat’ in order to see exactly what might happen to an HDB flat with an unlimited budget and at the hands of a professional. That Mr Cheung was an interior designer ‘explains why his home is so beautifully decorated’, helped as he was by his wife, Sum, a ‘keen amateur’. The featuring of a professional was rare, for the main star of these articles was ‘The do-it-yourself decorators’ [8]. This said, the vacillation between amateur and professional interior design values appeared regularly in this sub-genre of article. Take, as an example, the article on a flat in Dover Road that began:

‘The owners of this three-bedroom flat … profess they know very little about interior design. And yet [they] have shown that this so-called handicap has in no way prevented them from turning their ordinary flat into a modern and delightful home’ [9].

In the following issue the featured flat was again owned by someone whose amateur efforts nonetheless managed to achieve a ‘professional touch’:

‘If appearances are anything to go by, one look at Mr Wong’s flat will lead you into thinking that you’ve stepped into an interior decorator’s private apartment …. His artistry and flair in doing up his home … has made it comparable to a professional decorator’s’ [10].

The article concluded that despite ‘ambience’, ‘texture’ and ‘character’ being qualities given just the right attention by Mr Wong, these were to him, ‘just vague terms’ [11]. Here the intermingling of the ideal and real that constitute the modern interior is well illustrated in that individual home improvement efforts were overwritten with the discourses and visual language of a professionalised field known as ‘interior design’. Furthermore, these ‘designer’ homemakers were called upon to act as models of how other Singaporean homeowners might conduct themselves in relation to their interiors. Thus the HDB resident was equipped not only with ideas of what they too might do in their flat, but also confirmation that one does not need to be a professional to create an ‘interior design’ effect. In this sense, we can see how the HDB sought to cultivate in the modern Singaporean home-owner the figure of the ‘interior designer’, a resident who is able to be an engineer of atmosphere [12] [13]. This framework for delivering design principles put everyday interpretations and innovations centre stage of the HDB’s interior design story such that modernist design principles were drawn into more ordinary interiors shaped not only by design ideals, but also the pragmatic limits set by residents’ budgets, D-I-Y abilities, and existing furniture.