HDB: highly disturbed balance
(Government housing: Singapore)
I have such a wealth of images from my trip to Singapore in February that it seems a shame not to share them, even if they are all over a month old. Looking down from one of the highest floors of an HDB (Housing Development Board) block is a stomach churning experience for me. I have viewed flats in China on the twentieth floor but I just feel queasy each time I look out of the window – I don’t know how some people manage to live so high for the duration of their entire lives. I suppose a person can get used to anything. For the title here, I have revised the abbreviation HDB to express my own feelings of the blocks from halfway up.
The left hand image is the view from the doorway of the home of some of Ying’s relatives. I wanted you to see just how closely built and densely populated Singapore is – most people live in these types of apartments, simply because space is too scarce for many one and two storey buildings. The right hand image displays a technique I have not ever seen outside the realms of design books and architecture students Art School sketches. Trees are growing between the upper floors of this apartment block – I assume it too will be government HDB housing, but perhaps someone can correct me. I don’t even know if it’s possible to take a stroll on this level as if it were a convenient floating garden, or if the trees are merely for show. I do know that being so high and being exposed to trees would muddle my brain so much that I might be quite unwell.
At the minute, I am again doing some freelance work here in China, so the posts may be rather brief over the next few days. I will endeavour to maintain new images each day at the very least.
