The More We Get Together

A slew of co-living projects has opened in Singapore and most are so well designed, we want to move in immediately.

- Low Shiping

White. This is the colour dominating a co-living project conceptualised by Ministry of Design (MOD) for developer Figment earlier this year.

Aptly named Canvas House, the three-storey traditional shophouse along Blair Road is blanketed in a layer of white — including most of the ceiling, walls, floors and furniture — and represents an empty, almost theatrical backdrop for its residents to “live out their lives against”.

So explains MOD’s founder-director Colin Seah, who also sought to answer the question of how to sensitively tread the line between the past and present with an adaptive reuse project like this one.

Eschewing focusing solely on preservation — which he finds “paralysing and inhibiting” — Seah went on to interrupt the blank canvas he created with “playful peek-a-boo reveals” of its different parts to retain that connection to the past.

Canvas House is among a slew of thoughtfully-designed co-living projects that have opened recently in Singapore — there’s also lyf, Hmlet and Cove, among others. In fact, it is one of Figment’s 15 coliving properties, all of which are traditional shophouses reimagined by local designers to offer contemporary suites for let.

“Beyond a good spatial layout, design can also provide unique spatial and stylistic characteristics to a [co-living] space, making it more memorable or appealing,” says Seah.

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