IN A quiet corner of Sengkang town, six women and a drowsy terrier hold a conference in the shady spot at the foot of their apartment block. The women share just five available seats – but the discomfort is no barrier to conversation. When another turns up bearing a stone pestle, fruit knife and bag of gingko nuts, the rest instinctively reach across the table to help her crack them open.
One of the group members, retiree Tok See An, 65, says they were all strangers nine years ago when they first moved into the then bare and new estate.
Today, they share an easy camaraderie forged through small talk at their Housing Board void deck: a feature almost sy-nonymous with public housing in Singapore and one that is nearly 40 years old.
Since its introduction in 1970, it has served as social space and shelter – dolled up overnight for a Malay wedding only to be covered up the next day for a Chinese funeral.
In between, it has also played host to daredevil teenage boys practising parkour stunts, and the odd toddler trying out his new tricycle.
True to its name, the void deck consists of mostly empty space. Any suggestion that it was inspired by the minimalist designs of the late French modernist architect Le Corbusier is laughed off by HDB veterans.
The former chief architect of the HDB, Mr Tony Tan Keng Joo, says the void deck was simply devised to create an informal space for residents to meet and talk.
‘Public housing in Singapore is social engineering,’ he says. The void decks set the stage for interaction.
Dr Lai Ah Eng, an anthropologist from the Asia Research Institute, sees them providing valuable external social space in tropical Singapore, where the midday sun can make sitting outdoors unbearable.
‘It’s a place that you pass through, a space that you sit and wait, where you meet people for a brief chat,’ she says.
In addition to providing social space, void decks have helped to deter crime.
Housing planners wary of the crime that often thrived in public housing estates elsewhere placed chairs and tables near lift lobbies so that residents could keep an eye on those going in and out of their blocks.
The empty space beneath blocks also provided through paths for passers-by and made HDB blocks less imposing at the ground level.
Left to themselves, void decks have taken on the quirks of their residents, who often furnish them with their own belongings. Mr Tan recalls how some have carted entire sofas and fish tanks downstairs so that they can better enjoy them with their neighbours.
Housewife Peh Gek Choo leaves two armchairs in the void deck just outside the front door of her ground-floor flat in Sengkang. Neighbours are free to rest there on their way to the market.
One night, she says, a young man passing by fell asleep in one of the chairs and did not wake up until 8am, when her husband left for work.
Ms Pek says with a shrug: ‘He said he was really tired from the night before. We are all neighbours anyway – you have to give and take.’
In Pandan Gardens, the relatively bare void deck is filled with the strains of Chinese folk songs blasting from the Rediffusion sets installed at its lift lobbies.
Resident Hayati Ali Rahman, 65, says good-naturedly: ‘The music is okay lah. But no Malay songs.’
The Michelin Green Guide to Singapore terms void decks a ‘barometer of racial integration in Singapore’.
British-born Bukit Panjang resident Anthony Michael Fulwood takes this definition further, calling them a symbol of the ‘circle of life’.
‘It’s where people have weddings and funerals, and babies have first-month ce-lebrations,’ he says. ‘It’s almost like Va-ranasi city on the Ganges River, where people live, play and conduct their fune-ral rites by the river.’
Adding to the variety of void deck activity is the proliferation of voluntary welfare organisations that have set up shop to take advantage of the low rent, which ranges from $3 to $5 per square metre.
The number of such void deck set-ups – which include kidney dialysis centres and advocacy groups – has grown from 320 in 2000 to 530 this year.
But hectic lifestyles, greater demand for privacy and, more significantly, relatively lower usage could well spell the end of the void deck as we know it.
In 2003, the HDB Household Sample Survey revealed that only 20.3 per cent of residents used their void decks at least once a week.
Tampines resident and part-time graphic designer Siti Sarah Salim, 22, says people don’t bother to linger much at void decks in her locality these days.
‘It is really quiet… People just walk in and out of them. The warm feel of the void deck being a communal space is definitely missing.’
Over the years, void decks have shrunk in size because the footprint of each HDB block is getting smaller. There are just six to eight units now on each floor of the newer blocks, compared to almost double that number before. New block designs have also reduced the amount of unobstructed void deck space.
In some of the newer estates in Punggol, the typical ground-floor void deck has even ceased to exist. The scaled-down void decks have been moved one floor up and carparks now occupy the bottom of the block.
But, to keep pace with changing lifestyles, the HDB is trying out new ways to bring the void deck ‘to the people’.
In Sengkang, it has created a ‘community mall’, where common void deck facilities are clustered with playgrounds around a central pedestrian spine near the MRT station.
For very tall blocks, it has created sky gardens to tempt residents out of their flats and back into communal spaces. These mid-level green spaces allow residents to take a stroll without having to set foot on the ground floor.
Such interaction is going to be important to keep Singaporeans attuned to the lives of their countrymen of different classes, ages, religions and races, says Dr Lai.
‘If you have enough of this awareness of others through your living environment – even if it is in a temporary space like a void deck – you will accept these everyday differences,’ she says.
With such changes afoot, what will the void deck of the future look like?
If the HDB’s former head of planning and regulatory control, Mr Loh Swee Seng, had his way, the greenery around apartment blocks would also wend its way under them.
‘There may be a time when the void deck is part and parcel of the scenery outside. You could even have a stream flowing through the void deck,’ he says.
Four young designers were recently asked by The Straits Times to give their takes on what the future void deck could look like.
Their ideas ranged from the very high-tech to something as simple as improved seating and tables.
The HDB’s former chief architect, Mr Tan, thinks less is more. As far as he is concerned, void decks can pretty much take on any form.
But, he insists, ‘the only thing they should retain is the void’.
For, even as fancier social spaces come around, void decks will still be hard to beat for their shade, intimacy and constant ability to surprise.
