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Block 115 Commonwealth Drive, Singapore's first flatted factory. |
Editor's note: Our poetry column takes a break this month as I dip into a new, brilliantly-told industrial history of postwar Singapore, published by Pagesetters.
Last weekend, I found myself in a cavernous stairwell at Block 115 Commonwealth Drive, tiptoeing to see through the high, grid-like windows as a faint mustiness settled over me. The banisters were cool to the touch, smooth with decades of use, while cigarettes flattened into corners told of the building’s more recent occupants. I followed the tinkling of a windchime onto one of the upper corridors, where a door swung open to reveal shelves of clay figurines and – hunched at a long table – a potter at work. Save for the glossy poster on the wall outside, I could well have imagined men and women arriving in neatly-pressed uniforms for an afternoon shift at Roxy Electric, Wing Heng, or another of the many tenants to have occupied Singapore’s first flatted factory since it opened in 1965.