Abstract: Singapore is renowned as a food haven, largely due to our hawker foods. However, with the city-state’s rapid digitalisation and growth, it has become increasingly challenging to preserve the traditional hawker culture. Consequently, it is likely that hawker centres in Singapore will undergo significant changes, and the cultural landscape of hawker culture will inevitably shift in the near future. To combat this, this project’s main objective will be to archive and document hawker centres through the eyes of locals, with the aim of preserving the rich culture that these hawker centres embody.
By exploring the subtleties and nuances of hawker centres across the city-state, this project hopes to uncover the true essence of hawker culture in Singapore. This will not only foster a sense of identity amongst the local community but also serve to celebrate the unique hawker culture that has flourished in Singapore for generations. By documenting and archiving the cultural significance of these hawker centres, the project aims to preserve this vibrant part of Singapore’s heritage for future generations to appreciate and cherish.
Project Significance: Many attempts have been made to help keep the hawker culture alive already, such as the Hawker Development Programme (HDP), where the programme aims to entice more youngsters to take up hawker as a career as well as making hawker culture a part of the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage. Yet the hawker scene continues to experience inevitable changes due to rapid digitalisation of Singapore.
Likewise, it is often noted that these attempts to keep hawker culture alive focuses greatly on the food and hawkers. Although the hawkers and their food are indeed big players to keep hawker centres around, we often neglect the other important factors that makes a hawker culture — the ambience and nuances of the hawker centres like the ‘chope’ culture and mess around hawker centres. Hence, I will be exploring these aspects in my project to archive hawker centres before they change in the future.
Ideation: Understanding how hawker centres are structured has inspired me to feature the many different nuances we see and experience all around with our naked eyes. Therefore, the main design direction I will be working towards will focus on photos as well as textures use to create the deliverables. This is because hawker centres need to be experienced first hand and what better way to do it through our five senses. Hence, different ways to visually communicate our five senses when we are in a hawker centre will be explored.
Although in today’s day and age digital means are often thriving and we should fully utilise them, I still chose to use physical publications because I believe the textures of a hawker centre plays a significant role in their essence. It will be a lot more impactful to be able to see, touch and feel physically these textures to understand its essence which the digital space has its own limitations on. Furthermore, books are often known to be timeless centrepieces for experiences and findings, so it is more apt that publications are used to keep this culture in this timeless piece for many generations to enjoy.
I have three final outcomes:
1. Our Culture, Our ‘Chope’ Stories
2. Our Mess, Our Second Home
3. Our Workers, Our Thankless Jobs
Each essence is delved into to showcase better understanding of the subject matter and easily digested with a combination of interactive items to play with and images.
Our Culture, Our Chope Stories
This publication is a collection of stories from Singaporeans, through a questionnaire done on Reddit (r/singapore) to explore Singapore’s ‘chope’ culture through the eyes of Singaporean reddit users and how it impacts themselves and others, even foreigners.
Replicating how a hawker table visually looks like, this publication explores the different items Singaporeans use to ‘chope’ the table and these items can be interacted with. The use of empty space is intentional to show how a mere tiny object can hold such power over the availability of a hawker centre seat. As absurd as it may seem to some, especially foreigners, this is something that is unique and dear to Singaporeans.
Our Mess, Our Second Home
Singapore’s hawker centres are infamous for being untidy and unclean, almost to the point of being considered part of their identity. However, the untidiness is not due to the disregard of the hawkers who run the stalls and leave their things all over the place. Rather, it is because the hawkers are allocated limited space, and they must cram everything they need into their designated area. If this is not sufficient, they must get creative and utilise any available space in the hawker centre to ensure the safety of their belongings whilst not affecting other hawker stalls around. As a result, the hawker centre may appear disorganised, but it is a coordinated effort among the hawkers to respect each other’s belongings and areas of operation.
This distinctive “organised mess” is what sets Singapore’s hawker centres apart. Hawkers treat these hawker centres as their second home, customising their stalls and placing their belongings all over the area. Hence, this publication explores the nuances of this organised mess in a systematic manner — from the stall exterior and interior to all around and beyond their hawker stalls. This is to showcase how hawkers intentionally create this mess in the space to make hawker centres their second home.
Our Workers, Our Thankless Jobs
This publication explores the working conditions and experiences of the workers in our hawker centres, showing the hardships they experience in hopes for the readers to empathise with them and celebrate them. By delving into the intricacies of the working conditions and experiences of the diligent and hardworking individuals who work in the bustling hawker centres, I hope to shed light on the immense challenges they encounter. By highlighting the struggles that these individuals face, the piece endeavors to underscore the importance of celebrating these remarkable individuals who form an integral part of our society.
Exhibition Design
The aim for the exhibition design was to recreate the atmosphere of the hawker centre. Inspired by actual observations made from my site research, I decided to decorate my wall like how some hawkers decorate their stall front with a bunch of posters, photos, and stickers just below their stall sign. As for the surrounding areas, I was inspired by the mess around and beyond the hawker centres and hence I attempted to replicate the mess with objects I can find within my household. To top it off, a miniature hawker centre table can be seen at the side, bootleg foldable table, plastic chairs as well as floor vinyl stickers were used to create the hawker centre atmosphere. Radio is also placed as a prop as well as used to create sound atmosphere of the hawker centre as many hawkers use it when they are preparing to open or close their stall interactive items to play with and images.
