We all know interior design exists to assist us lend a purposeful and exquisite look to our house. To maximise workplace and retail areas, some shopoffices may attain as much as heights of five to 6 flooring, and a 5-foot ways may be integrated for the floor above the bottom level. Popular perception holds that shophouses were initially occupied by single households, with their private living areas in one space and the more public household enterprise in one other.
Many house designed for under a single family would end up with ten or more households residing in them. Decorative mouldings, delicate ornaments, detailed pilasters, elaborate woodcarvings and imported glazed tiles had been extensively used on the facades of these shophouses. It is on Keong Saik Highway, one among my favourite shophouse roads in Singapore.
Art Deco type structure emerged within the Nineteen Thirties, and had greatly influenced the design of shophouses. I lately went in seek for as many shophouses in Singapore as I could discover. As its name suggests, a shophouse often accommodates a shop with separate residential spaces. Exposed to the cultures of the European, American and Chinese, the Art Deco-styled shophouses often had grey Shanghai plaster partitions …