“SUPERCOOL you’re here,” says Eugene, looking like he means it. The young Singaporean is showing visitors around his new apartment, a three-bedroom flat in one of the city-state’s many high-rise blocks. Eugene says he and his new wife can’t wait to start filling the space with babies. He even sounds excited that his in-laws are coming to stay.
If Eugene sounds too good to be true, that’s because he’s a hologram, trapped behind glass at a self-aggrandising museum in the bowels of Singapore’s Housing & Development Board (HDB). Lots of countries show off their public-housing projects, but few are quite as devoted to them as Singapore, where four-fifths of the permanent population live in subsidised units built by the government, most of them as owner-occupiers. The city-state’s suburbs bristle with HDB towers, painted calming pastel hues.
This vast national housing system surprises visitors...Continue reading
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