PublicLife

Courtesy of Huggies's @ Admiralty Drive Among the HDB estates that intrigue me, Admiralty stands out as one of the strangest. Take the floorplan above, as an example. Firstly, if you look carefully, you'd notice that the front door of this unit is so close to the front door of the opposite unit that, if both households were to open their doors at the same time, the doors would come very close to touching and the people exiting their flats would probably end up crashing into each other! Then, for goodness knows what reason, the master bedroom is oddly kinked and curved. What any flat owner can put in that strangely curved corner is a complete mystery to me! Then, the study is oddly isolated from the rest of the unit by virtue of the fact that it is tucked away in a corner with its very own entrance passageway. An excellent choice for people who require complete silence and isolation to study, but an absurdity for everyone else! To top it all off, the whole apartment seems to suffer from a remarkable lack of ventilation, with unbelievably few windows in each room. Bedroom 2 is the worst though. Not only does it have just two casement windows, but the windows are tucked by the side wall, where they offer an unparalleled view of the side of the building! Amazing!

Although most of us are familiar with the above layout for 5-room point block flats, this variation is also very nice: Courtesy of Somewhere in Bishan The bedrooms are all lined up in a row, and the dining room + living room + balcony space is huge! And the kitchen wall can easily be demolished and a lovely island counter put in its place, and the kitchen itself is big enough that you could even split it into 2 and create a wet kitchen and a dry kitchen (if you really wanted to!).

Noticed a lot of new t-blogs featuring HDB's latest innovation: loft units. A very pleasant development on the HDB's part. Courtesy of A New Beginning At Treelodge@punggol

This flat below is a particularly interesting contrast to the one above: Courtesy of Our Resale 3rm Flat @ Redhill Close They have more or less the same layout, except that the one below has one less bedroom. And the entrances to the toilet and bath face in the opposite directions! One enters the toilet from the yard and the bath from just outside the kitchen. Bizarre!

The thing about reading old t-blogs (some of which feature much older flats) is that you can really see the evolution in HDB's thinking and how they've determined what the typical flat owner needs in terms of storage space. Take the above 'HDB house' and the flat below, for example: Courtesy of Mun & Rebecca & Enen's New Home They have a space called "Cupboard", which was obviously superseded by the ubiquitous "Store" and then later, the much maligned "Household shelter" that we've all seen in modern HDB floorplans. But it's interesting how the SIT terrace house above has 3 cupboards: 1 in the living room (obviously meant to be a store room / pantry cupboard) and 1 in each of the bedrooms (obviously meant to be a wardrobe / clothes cupboard). But in the 4-room standard HDB flat below, there is now only 1 cupboard, in the living room (obviously meant to be a store room / pantry cupboard). Clearly, by this point in time, homeowners were expected to build their own wardrobes in their bedrooms.

I also found this layout fascinating: Courtesy of Our New Place @ Clementi In contrast to some flat layouts, which leave the dining area dark and dingy, this layout provides the dining area with its own windows (and light and fresh air!). There is also an interesting niche in front of the bathroom in the master bedroom that is almost screaming to be turned into a walk-in wardrobe. Lovely!

Was nosing around some older t-blogs (my favourite pastime!) when I came across these interesting floorplans. I've honestly never seen any flats quite like them before! Courtesy of My Dream Hse At Woodlands 4rm (104sqm) The elongated storeroom near the front entrance is particularly unique. With its fascinating pair of slatted wooden doors (see some of the pics on the above t-blog), it seems almost custom-made to become a shoe cupboard! A most practical addition to an Asian home! Finally, a rare example of HDB planners designing an appropriate layout for local use! Bathroom 2 is a little strangely configured though, with its kinked shower area... But I suppose it was the only way they could put a window in that toilet (i.e. facing the service balcony).

Actually that's why I like the old Tiong Bahru flats as well... Toilets nicely tucked by the side or back of the flat.

Here's another interesting one that on first glance seems to be a 3-room flat (after all, it only has 2 bedrooms). But looking at it closely, my guess is that it's probably a 4- or 5-room flat (the common bedroom is labelled "Bedroom 3", which suggests that there was a "Bedroom 2" as well at some point...) and that the previous owner must have knocked down the walls to one of the bedrooms in order to expand the living area. Courtesy of Our New Home However, I've never seen a 4- or 5-room flat quite like this before. Interesting...

As always, I love trawling though old RT t-blogs to see what sort of flats Renotalkers have had to deal with over the years. Here's an interesting one that's almost perfect except... Courtesy of The Green House for the fact that the whole top edge of the flat is quite sharply slanted. Most peculiar! Other than that, it's really pretty well-designed overall. The master bedroom comes with a niche that's just perfect for the wardrobe and bath 2 faces the common bedrooms (as it should be).

Ha! Ha! Ha! I find it truly hilarious that the HDB decided to plonk the kitchen sink in the dining room of this poor flat... On the plus side though, I'm sure that this has certainly made it easier to wash the dishes after meals! Just turn around and put the dirty plates in the sink - you don't even have to get up from the dining table!

Woah... Really have to wonder what JTC was thinking at that point in time... "Hey, boss, I think we should put the entrance to the shower in the balcony!" "Yah. Good idea! People definitely want to walk through the balcony wrapped in nothing but a bath towel!" "And we should also put the rubbish chute in the balcony so that people can...um...throw away rubbish on their way to the toilet!" "Wah! Super great idea!"

Well, this is a pretty common layout for new HDB flats (and new mass-market condos too!) actually. There are some RT t-blogs that feature flats with similar layouts, like this: Courtesy of Segar Meadows Our 1st Lovenest and this... Courtesy of Compassvale View... My Home Go dig around and I'm sure you'll find some more!

As readers of this t-blog will know, the more skewed a HDB flat is, the more I'm amused by it. So, in the category of OMG-this-is-hilarious is this gem: As you can see from the diagram, the kitchen, master bedroom and toilets are stunningly angled at 45 degrees to the bedrooms. This has resulted in the Master Bedroom having an oddly angled corner, Bathroom 2 looking rather squashed, and there being no service yard at all (people in Punggol do not do much laundry in the eyes of the HDB, perhaps?). Sigh, perhaps this is yet another product of a special HDB department known as 'let's see how strange we can make HDB flats and yet people will still buy them'.

My verdict is still out on this one though... Courtesy of House Wacking And Renovation All things considered, it's not a bad flat but I do have two major issues with it (or rather its designers... the HDB!): (1) First, what's with the micro kitchen and bathroom-to-nowhere. Was the proper ventilation of bathrooms not an issue in the past (one door and no apparent windows... that's really smart... suffocation must be a major health hazard in this block )? And why is the kitchen so tiny (from the floorplan it looks smaller than my office pantry!)? (2) Secondly, what's with the odd zigzag wall between the two bedrooms? Was it the result of some strange conviction in the importance of egalitarianism (did HDB think that to ensure that both bedrooms have exactly the same floor area, they should build a really weird wall between the two of them)?