From a childhood shophouse to a life's work.
I grew up in a black-and-white, Peranakan-style shophouse in the Blair Plain conservation area — a three-generation household crowded with people and with the antiques and artworks my parents hauled home from their travels. It taught me what it feels like to belong to a place, and to a neighbourhood full of kampung spirit.
When I came home from studying in Boston, I could barely recognise Singapore. Soulless skyscrapers and cookie-cutter condominiums were swarming the skyline, demolishing shophouses in their wake. I felt lost in my own country. So I took back my childhood shophouse, handpicked local creatives to restore its interiors, and opened it to the community as Figment's first Boutique Home.
That instinct became the work: treat the shophouse as the quintessential Singaporean work of art, champion local makers as our cultural construction workers, and turn houses back into homes with a real sense of place. The professionals call it creative placemaking. I just call it living artfully.