Areas must not lose their charm else it may possibly lead to a home that looks and feels boring. The shophouses on Syed Alwi Street span many eras and architectural kinds and are some of the finest that I’ve seen on this space. The shophouses of recent Singapore are basically unchanged in these functions, serving as retail stores, eating places, workplaces and training areas. In the present day, shophouses continue to outline Singapore’s adaptation to alter. Traditionally, many shophouses would have been plastered an off-white colour.
By the 1930s, world recession and prevailing artistic tendencies had induced a swing in direction of more sober Artwork Deco and modernist buildings, with simpler, geometrical facades typically topped by a central flagpole. The Baba Home is representative of the visible curiosity that a properly restored shophouse can provide to our city landscape, and on the similar time, remind us how these shophouses are representative of Singapore’s distinctive cultures and aesthetic tastes.
Shophouses of the Early Style had been mostly easy double-storey buildings with one or two rectangular home windows on the upper flooring and timber-framed doors that had louvers or shutters for air flow. At Arab Road, as an example, as many as …