SINGAPORE – A rare chance for art and architecture enthusiasts to step inside a private residence built in 1963 and designed by the late architectural pioneer William Lim has arrived, as homeowner and artist Tan Ngiap Heng opens up his house for a farewell art show.
Lim is remembered most for his towering modernist designs of People’s Park Complex and Golden Mile Complex, but Tan remembers the architect as a friend of his late father – pathologist Tan Kheng Khoo – who designed the two-storey residence the younger Tan was brought up in since he was born 57 years ago.
The 432 sq m house, which sits on a 2,028 sq m plot of land on C-1 Holland Park, was also where Tan Ngiap Heng ran a home medical facility to care for his sick father, who died in 2019, and mother – Madam Gunn Chit Siew – who died in 2022.
Now, Tan – the youngest of their three children – is ready to let go and sell the house, but not without a proper goodbye. He says: “I could not stop my parents from dying, but by giving them care in their home, I gave them the best final journey that I could – and same for the house.”
As part of Singapore Art Week, Tan has invited curator Michael Lee to commission six other artists for a series of site-specific works displayed around the house for Eat Play Love, which is open to the public from Jan 17 to 31.
Lee, 51, says: “My wish is for visitors to come here and find out about the works, about the house, and think back on their memories of places they have hastily left or everyday activities they have abandoned for decades.”
For heritage enthusiasts, architectural conservationist Ho Weng Hin’s words in a dedicated essay by non-profit group Docomomo Singapore for the show makes a case for this “unsung masterwork” sensitive to the local climate.
“Masterworks like C-1 Holland Park reveal the purest visions of independence-era Malayan architects, but they are unprotected due to a gap in Singapore’s built heritage conservation policies. To date, no post-war private modernist residence has received conservation status in Singapore.”
While Tan would like for the house – which has not found a buyer – to be conserved by the next owner, he says it would not be a condition for the sale. In all likelihood, he is expecting his family home to be demolished.
Ahead of Eat Play Love’s opening, The Straits Times visited C-1 Holland Park to capture some of the art and architectural intrigues of this modernist gem.
The first thing that catches the eye is the house’s intriguing facade with a V-shaped butterfly roof and red brick walls inspired by New Brutalist architecture. Part of its charm is in Lim’s use of mid-century local construction materials, such as kapor and balau.
The house is replicated in artist Catherine Hu’s Garden Varieties (2023), a miniature model made of bamboo and raffia that feels bereft of domestic life. But it is also generously open, as a patient observer can spot monitor lizards, junglefowl, frogs and butterflies making a temporary home in it.
Step into the airy living room and film-maker Lei Yuan Bin’s short dance film, A Dance For A House (2023), offers an intimate look at Tan’s artistic life in relation to the spaciousness of his house, which Tan says enabled his creativity. In the film, Tan – who is also a dance photographer – dances around the house in a nod to his background as a trained dancer.
As one rises through the stairwell, the infill louvred windows, timbre-strip walls and mild-steel balustrades are some fine details that contribute to the symphony of textures. Artist Cynthia Delaney Suwito’s artificial plants in Belongings (2024), made from household objects, feels like a comment on the porous indoors and outdoors of the house, and photographer Khoo Guo Jie’s Portals (2023) offers abstract visions of living in this austere modernist residence.
On the second floor, in the private space of a bathroom, Tan has installed a meditative video For Lila (2020), dedicated to his daughter, who turns five in 2024. When asked what his daughter thinks of the video, Tan says she likes the ultrasound scans that are weaved into this work.
Tan and his family will live at the house throughout the exhibition period, which contributes to the feeling that the show is being held in a lived-in space.
In one of the house’s four bedrooms, a three-channel video installation by Tan plays on the bed and two other screens. In Bedtime (2023), Tan wonders about the dynamics of movement in bed.
He says: “I was single for a long time and I met my wife when I was 50. When we started living together, I found that the dynamics of living together in the same bed is very different and you wouldn’t know this as a single person.”
Returning outdoors, one glimpses the words “Pang Tio” (Teochew for “just let go”) stencilled onto live grass by Tan in his first text-based work. Pang Tio (2024) is a work inspired by a catchphrase of his father, who was a meditation teacher to many people, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The work, Tan says, will disappear over time as the grass grows – a reminder to let go of this house of historical significance but, more importantly, one he has called home for close to six decades.
Book It / Eat Play Love
Where: C-1 Holland Park
When: Jan 17 to 31, 11am to 7pm
Admission: Free
Info: eatplaylove.site
