SHOPHOUSES IN-SITU

 

I did a bit of Revit family development work today. A round-headed shophouse window with shutters that can be open or closed.

Will try to assemble 4 or 5 different window designs to roughly this level of detail, then look at other variable elements. Classical mouldings, columns, eaves details. There's quite a lot to go at.

Not sure how to tackle the different plan layouts. Maybe I need to develop 3 or 4 that illustrate the range of possibilities. It all depends how much time I can put in before something else grabs my attention.

Let's see where this goes.

 

I'm always looking up when walking the five foot ways of shop-houses. Mindful of course that there may be small steps to trip me if I forget my feet. (there's a metaphor in there somewhere)

Once again I find variety within a common theme. Notice the bat-shaped ventilation openings at high level. And the stylish classical corbel that provides a bearing for the main facade beam.

Why do the ceiling beams span in the long direction? Because that ceiling is part of the floor of a room that stretches way back into the interior.

 

Another page from my student project, coming back to architecture at the age of 40 and thinking about the slippery topic of how architecture represents values.

Vernacular building styles seem to do this without trying to. They are just traditions passed down the generations because "that's the way we have always done it" Some kind of natural selection process analogous to biology resulting in well-adapted dwellings.

As the pace of change quickens and architects become more self-conscious, the dynamics change. The blind watchmaker gradually gives way to factories mass-producing cuckoo clocks. We face the danger of over-thinking, becoming too clever for our own good.

Spontaneity gives way to cleverness, which is not always bad, but often leaves us feeling empty.

 

 

The old-ish and the new-ish. Residential towers loom large above shophouses in Singapore. It's easy to wax lyrical about the relaxed informality of the shuttered facades with their human scale, but sometimes there just isn't enough space for a low rise solution.

When I study old buildings and comment on positive qualities that we seem to have lost, it's not to suggest that we can simply wind the clock back. We need to look forward, but we also need to understand our history and look for continuities where they can be found.

Is it about creating economies where more people work with their hands?.. feeling the same pride as the carpenters who crafted these shutter/railing/glazed-door-composites in their infinite varieties?

Or is it about maintaining the human scale at street level, the activity of small businesses along residential streets? In Singapore they have also made a serious attempt at the "Gardens in the sky" approach. I couldn't possibly comment. 😜

 

I really like this version of the shophouse typology, where the upper floor has an open balcony to match the five foot ways at ground level.

Whats really great is that you can have a whole district of shop-houses where there is a common feel but also a sense of variation and structure.

There might be a long row where the facades follow the same design, then suddenly you get some short one, then some with recessed top floors like this.

It all seems perfectly natural and organic, the sign of a good tradition. And what a wonderful counterpoint to the high-rise blocks that inevitably came with rapid growth of the economy.

 

 

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