60 years of Our Singapore Housing

HDB introduced the design of 5-room point block flats in 1971 as a bold and imaginative move which would eventually help to bring down the cost of middle-class housing as the economy was improving at that time. Therefore, applicants whose income ranged from $1200 to $1500 per month would be eligible for registration to apply for 5-room flats. Each level of a 5-room point block served 4 units for privacy purposes. Most of these blocks stood at 25 storeys high. 5-room standard point block floor plan 5-room Improved point block floor plan 5-room slab block floor plan A typical 5-room Standard flat consist of 3 bedrooms, a living room, a dining room and 2 bathrooms cum toilets located in the kitchen and master bedroom of the flat. An Improved flat has an additional storeroom and extension of the master bedroom. When the first batch of 5-room point block units were completed in 1973 in the Farrer Road, Zion Road and Kallang Basin area, these flats cost $27500 in a new town...

Before point blocks were built in HDB Estates, all residential blocks conformed to a standard slab design where as many as more than 10 units were served by a common corridor. The point blocks first started in 1970 when two blocks of 20-storey flats were built in Mei Ling Street at Queenstown with a mixture of 3-room and 4-room units. However, these blocks were designed with an eye to reduce homogeneity in public housing which accommodated four units on every floor so as to provide more privacy for the residents compared to slab blocks. Following the success of the pilot project at Mei Ling Street, the HDB went on to build more similar high-rise point blocks at Kallang Basin and also across the country with more 4-room and 5-room units being built over the next decade. The first point blocks at Mei Ling Street under construction, 1969 Bendemeer Road point blocks similar to the ones at Mei Ling Street, 1970 20-storey point blocks at Moulemin Road, 1972 New point block a...

Some of the land areas of Singapore were reclaimed from the rivers and the seas to create new land in order to support a growing population in the early days. This is known as land reclamation. The HDB also carried out reclamation projects to build flats so that Singaporeans can have a roof over their heads. The earliest reclamation project was focused on Kallang Basin. Before the reclamation in the early 1960s, Kallang Basin used to be surrounded by squatter huts where residents lived in unsanitary conditions. Kallang Basin in the midst of reclamation, 1964 Squatter huts in Kallang Basin before land reclamation, 1964 Over the next decade until the mid-1970s, approximately 1000 acres of land have been reclaimed at Kallang Basin to build not only new flats in 3 neighbourhoods but also industrial development like flatted factories and terrace factories so that residents who were rehoused into these new flats could look for employment opportunities easily. An aerial view of B...