Warsaw’s Flats, and the HDB

Newer apartments in Warsaw, Poland

Landed in Poland today in the morning, after a sleepless night on the chairs of Heathrow Airport. Amazingly, my British Airways flight wasn’t cancelled, and made the 2 hour trip to Warsaw.

The first impressions of Poland are that of its buildings and design. The buildings here are very rectangular, with few frills, and usually in drab pastel colors- a relic of the communist era. They very much resemble the Singapore’s early-era HDB flats (public-built housing apartments) that one can see in Delta Crescent and Old Airport Road. One of my travelling partners, upon seeing the block numbers at the side of the apartments (similar to Singapore’s) exclaimed “HDB!”- very much to my amusement.

High rise apartments in Poland

Thinking about the HDB, there is perhaps that defines Singaporean architecture than the HDB flats. It is perhaps an authentic Singaporean construct, with its bamboo poles, potted plants, void decks (open space on the ground floor), and corridors that run along the outside of the building (not a common site outside Singapore). These were the villages for my generation, and I wonder how much it has defined out collective psyche- or how much it describes it.

I attended a talk a while ago that touched on how the design of buildings/workspaces could either build community, or destroy it- and it would be interesting to research which of these roles the HDB has fulfilled. In other news, recent debates about access have raised interesting questions about the HDB’s future, and it will be interesting to see how things pan out.