Back To Basics

Local filmmaker Daniel Yun’s five-room flat will have You see HDBS in a whole new light.

- Sylvia Ong

After decades of living in landed homes and private condos with sleek designs, Singaporean filmmaker Daniel Yun has returned to the heartlands. “I got to the point where I grew tired of the zen style of my corner terrace home in Thomson Hill,” he says. “I wanted to come home to something calm. Lesson learnt: when you put a human in a zen room, the zen flies out the window.”

Now, four years on, Daniel, who’s in his 50s, can’t be happier in his “classic and contemporary” abode – a five-room flat atop the iconic clover-shaped HDB block in Ang Mo Kio which commands sweeping views of the Upper and Lower Peirce Reservoirs.

“Many of my friends thought I had downgraded to an HDB. But I didn’t. I’m just so intrigued by the circular space, the large windows, and the way the light streams in at sunrise and sunset. To me, this is a poor man’s equivalent of an Orchard Road apartment,” he reveals. “Besides, where else can you have a private garden like Bishan Park? I just walk out there and I can enjoy a good run whenever I want.”