3) Lotus at Joo Chiat

Lotus at Joo Chiat

Address: 89 Joo Chiat Place, Singapore 427806

Lotus at Joo Chiat is a service apartment which consisted of several shop houses which have been preserved, restored and ultimately refurbished. These service apartments draws on the rich heritages and cultures of the Peranakans and Eurasians communities in the area to attract working professionals, mostly foreigners to live in such accommodations where they would be able to experience the rich cultures in these areas and immerse themselves in it.

These shop houses have really been well restored and were elegant and from our observation, the people who we see walking along these streets are Caucasian who are likely to be foreigners.

It was quite evident that the target customers of these service apartment were people of greater purchasing power and we being students did feel a bit out of place in this area.

However, we did learn something new about the Peranakans from the design of their houses and is that the most Peranakan houses had a Pintu Pagar (refer to image on below: the wooden structure that Yankai is intently staring at) which acts as a half length door which allows residents to open up their main doors but still maintain a certain amount of privacy. This seems to suggest the existence of the kampong spirit where neighbours within the same community trust each other enough to leave their doors open with the mentality and confidence that their items would not be stolen by their neighbours.

The information which we obtain the information with regards to the Pintu Pagar was through the small information board provided by the Urban Redevelopment Agency (URA). So be sure to keep your eyes on the look-out for these board as they often contain nuggets of interesting information about the cultures of the local community in the area.