Mind if we come in?

In 2013, Japanese ex-pats Eitaro Ogawa and Tamae Iwasaki (AKA husband-and-wife art collective, Keyakismos) were attending an exhibition in Singapore when they got talking with the eminent Japanese architect Tomohisa Miyauchi (who tends to go by 'Tomo'). It was one of those stars-align moments, when two powerful creative forces, ricocheting randomly through the cosmos, bump into one another over canapés.

The trio began chatting about housing and design in Singapore, and specifically HDB (Housing & Development Board) housing, and it wasn't long before someone mentioned the idea of a book. Eitaro and Tamae would write the stories, and Tomo could shoot the homes. Four years later, in August 2017, HDB: Homes of Singapore hit the shelves. It was the first real, raw, encyclopaedic look at what actually goes on behind the doors of Singapore's largest public housing scheme, the so-called "everyone's home", in which over 3 million people from different cultures and multiple generations quietly live their lives. At 680 pages, it was also about the size of the average phone book.

From the outside, HDB flats all look kind of the same. Your basic cost-effective, non-descript, high-rise apartment formula. But as Tomo, Eitaro and Tamae soon discovered, the apartments themselves (and the people who dwell in them) were anything but ordinary.

So, what started this idea?

Eitaro: Tamae and myself have lived in Singapore since 2001. We were both working at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI). In about 2007 we moved out of our Seletar¹ home and started to live in HDB housing.

At the beginning, we were very reluctant. From the outside, the HDB buildings all seemed to look the same, very rigid, and we weren't excited to move. But then one of our friends who lives in HDB invited us to see their house, and it was beautifully renovated. Since then, our perception of our HDB housing has completely changed. We visited a few different apartments, and we started to throw some ideas around. You know, the exterior of HDB looks so boring, but once you get inside it's incredibly exciting. And it's not published anywhere. Nobody talks about it.

Tamae: Nothing happened for a few years, until we met Tomo. We were just praying for someone to come along who knew architecture and publishing. We had a lot of Singaporean friends, a lot of contacts, but we were missing the other part of the project.

Eitaro: Then we met Tomo. And we said, "Oh, you're an architect… and you know publishing… and you've just moved to Singapore. Are you interested in working with us?"

A week later, Tomo reached out, and we visited our work colleagues, who lived in HDB. Tomo came with his little camera, and while we were talking to our friends he was taking photographs everywhere. Then he said, "Finished, let's go." We were walking down the street outside, and we said, "Tomo, are we starting something?" And he said, "Oh, we're making a book." So that was the first house.

What was the original plan?

Eitaro: In the beginning, our heart was very fixed. We wanted to feature renovated houses; cool, beautiful, well-designed houses. That was in our mind from the start. But we ran out of content quite quickly. Then Tomo had the idea: why don't we instead feature the real life of Singapore? That's easier, and it could be much more fun. So since then, instead of us curating the book, we let actual Singaporeans curate the book. Different generations of people. Different races. Different religions.

Tamae: We wanted to capture who lives there, and how they live. And what we found was that the generation gap was really, amazingly, wide. You had grandchildren and parents and big Indian families with kids running everywhere. And the apartments differed a lot. From an old, post-war sort of look to super modern, very advanced, fully renovated houses.

Tomo: The photos ended up in the Singapore Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, but that was a total by-product. We actually shot too many places. We shot about 118 homes over four years, and we had so much stuff that we basically had to make a book.

Did you get a good reaction from residents?

Eitaro: Most people were very open, yeah. I think because we were three Japanese people coming in, just knocking on Singaporeans' doors, some people weren't sure if they should do it. But after we introduced ourselves and Tomo, they were okay.

Tamae: After we shot our friend's flat, which was very fancy, just across the road we noticed an older HDB building, so we thought we'd walk around, knock on some doors, see if we could shoot.

And we came to one apartment, which clearly hadn't changed in 40 years, and this old Chinese auntie comes out, and I tried to explain what we were doing, and immediately she just pulled me inside, speaking Chinese, saying, "Come in, come in! Sit!" So I sit, and she called out to her son. I think she thought we were his friends. He came out of the bedroom like, "Uhh… who are you?" It was a bit awkward, but once we explained again they were very nice. "Okay, you can take photos."

So we saw both sides of the spectrum. On one side of the street, my friend's high-rise HDB, very fancy, and then just across the street this old auntie's house. And I thought, that's Singapore.

What kind of aesthetic were you looking for?

Tomo: I had to wear several different hats with this project, and when it came to photography, the main thing I wanted to do was be very respectful. So every time we shot a home, we didn't ask to change anything, actually. Sometimes we knocked on the door, and the owner was there, and we'd just shoot the place as is.

I tried to capture everything as if I'm a photographer, but not a photographer. Almost like a Wim Wenders film. You know that one about Berlin, where angels move amongst us, listening, but we can't see them. They just observe. So whatever the life was, that's what we'd shoot. It was a very peaceful, very respectful process.

Did people ask you to come back so they could clean up first?

Tomo: Not really. I think that's how the media think people live, but what we found was that, in HDB, people didn't own many things. They were very minimalist, in a way. It's kind of wisdom. So a very kind of humble life, because the space is quite limited.

As Eitaro said, HDB buildings can be quite rigid, like a frame, but the way people actually live, they sort of move beyond that structure. Their imagination and reason start to supersede the framework. That's why each home felt so different.

Eitaro: Our one golden rule was that we never asked people to clean up, or set anything up. We just wanted to shoot as they live. I think that gives the book a kind of honesty. The other thing we decided was that this wasn't going to be a portrait book, so the houses should speak for themselves.

What kind of feedback did you get?

Tamae: Until we got the emails from Singaporeans saying, "Thank you so much for this book," we didn't realise how much it affected people. A lot of residents said they weren't particularly proud to live in HDB, but when they discovered foreigners, like us, coming to live in Singapore and saying HDB is very interesting, they felt better. They felt like maybe this was a good place to live. That this was the culture of Singapore. The 'thank you' letters kept coming in, which was very touching.

Eitaro: We had researchers contacting us, and some professors reaching out. A lot of people found the design of HDBs fascinating. We even got feedback from TV producers, from the local drama shows, who were using our book as a kind of reference guide. So when they needed to style a Chinese house, or an old folk's home or a young Indian couple's home, you know it's actually quite hard to imagine what that looks like. But with this book, you have a real reference.

Did the design of HDB developments surprise you?

Tomo: If I can put on my architect's hat for a second: HDB housing developments actually have an amazing amount of research and development behind them. When you look at the early flats, from the 60s and 70s, they were very concerned about how to put the trash out, or how to hang laundry effectively, or how to create a simple mailbox system that everyone can access. The buildings were given their wider frontage, and they were designed so that the wind could blow through them, providing natural ventilation.

They really studied all these minor things and put them all into public housing in a very detailed design. It's really impressive how much thinking the government put into developing HDB. That's why it works. That's why it's so comfortable. Even in a tropical environment.

Eitaro: HDB is always changing too, with the different generations of building. When we started shooting, that was around the time the government started inviting international and Singaporean architects to come up with very experimental housing designs, and we managed to capture some of the best ones. Like Skyville by WOHA and SkyTerrace by SCDA.

Tomo: We were also able to capture some of the earliest HDB projects, before they were even known as HDB, back when they were built under the Singapore Improvement Trust. So we could kind of track the evolution of Singaporean public housing, from past to present.

What did you learn during the four years of production on this book?

Eitaro: I learned that Singaporeans are very friendly people. You know, without that openness, this book would never have happened. I think the existence of this book is evidence of Singapore's character.

Tamae: HDB just proves that Singapore is one of the most future-thinking countries in the world. Land is limited. People have few resources. So they're very focused on the future, which is why HDB still works. 50 years ago, 40 years ago, they were already planning for today.

Tomo: I think this project wasn't just about making a book. Eitaro and Tamae are artists, so it was about art, but it was also about community – about embracing people's lives. Without Eitaro and Tamae's warm heart and warm spirit, this project would never have happened.

We weren't making a book, actually. We were talking to people, getting to know people and celebrating how they live every single day.

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^{¹ One of Singapore’s quieter, more affluent, less skyscraper-y enclaves. One of the few areas in the country where big houses and gardens aren’t uncommon.}