Influenced by social media, “digital content creators” have become a trendy form of work, allowing people to share their lifestyles and even businesses to be created. It seems most of these types of work are made and experienced digitally, resulting in disembodied relations of people and workplaces. Yet, digital content creators are always on the look out for cheap and flexible work accommodations, affording and negotiating their working needs at basic levels: for example, a working desk.

My project is anchored at a mixed- use podium of an old HDB (public housing) typology in Chinatown, where housing units are built on top of the podium. The podium is occupied by stores that are mostly outdated and falling out of synchronization with the surroundings; the shopkeepers are either struggling to sustain the rent or unable to afford the long-term lease. My project explores how to create a flexible spatial presence for those creators with lower prices, and in the process, I find a way as well for these business provisions to be shared with the residential community. What follows is thus a reinvention of the often segregated relationship of private(businesses)- public(residential), working-home, and podium-flats, typologies of Singapore’s older housing blocks in the city.

With this housing block in Chinatown, my project test beds this reinvented business/ neighbourhood typologies through the design of manipulable spatial elements for the future digital city (of movable walls, shelves, crates, and planter boxes), that in fact double up as neighourhood facilities when not rented by content creators (as a landscape park, fitness corners, public forum, flea market, library).