Response to retention of Siglap block shows everyday buildings have value

As to what to do with it now, one could look to Hong Kong's Mei Ho House for inspiration

- Ng Keng Gene

Block 1 East Coast Road is a squat, five-storey HDB block on the corner of East Coast Road and Siglap Road that does not particularly stand out.

Yet after The Straits Times reported on Oct 5 that the authorities would repurpose the 61-year-old building, reversing an earlier decision to demolish it and redevelop the site, netizens gushed about the news.

On social media, netizens called Block 1 and the cluster of flats around it their "childhood place" and a beloved landmark in Siglap from decades gone by.

To many of these people, the building was a reminder of yesteryear, the kind that seems to be increasingly rare in Singapore these days. Their reactions also showed that everyday, mundane buildings can have significant heritage value.

Built in 1963 on the site of a kampung that had been destroyed by a fire, the flats in Blocks 1 to 4 East Coast Road were among the earliest delivered by the then nascent Housing Board.

While they have been vacant since 2015, in the 52 years that those flats were in use, they were the only public housing in Siglap, an enclave of private homes.

They have also been a constant in a neighbourhood that has lost other landmarks such as the old Siglap Market.

Previously, all four blocks were slated for demolition under a Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme (Sers) project announced in 2011. Now, Block 1 will be retained for public use after the authorities put out a tender for consultants to oversee the building's refurbishment, while its three neighbouring blocks will be torn down by 2026.