Singapore: tiles in Chinatown

Yesterday I took myself off for a cake in my one of my favoured Chinatown cafes. And was struck by all these lovely tiles in the area.

Chinatown (yes, the region where, historically, the largest concentration of Chinese lived - it's easy to forget that Singapore was once part of Malaya.. and then ruled by the British) now seems to have three personalities:

1. Total tourist hub for foreigners, selling fun junk for souvenirs (most of which have nothing to do with Singapore)
2. An original, local-style Chinese part where people get on with their lives and don't seem to understand my English (or my Mandarin - though that seems to be universal.. poss more study required! ^^)
3. A maze of old shop-house streets, nicely converted into slightly hip/yuppie-fied restaurants, cafes and design studios.

I was in part 3.

Singapore, given its history and location, is a mish-mash of architectural styles. But the tiles here are most probably influenced by Peranakan style - which in turn took elements from colonial Portuguese and Dutch styles in the region. (See Nyonya deco shopfronts in Singapore  and The Peranakan Museum ) 

The more geometric patterns look very Western-influenced (maybe from the 1960's or 70's? There are some art-deco buildings in the area too, so perhaps these geometric patterns are from even earlier?)

Anyway, yuppie or not, it's nice that Singapore has areas like this, where old architecture is restored and put to good use. Some other countries (take note Malaysia!) went through a whole period of tearing down anything old to put up new concrete blocks. Everything has an evolution, but sometimes it's nice to retain a bit of history too!

(You can click on pix - which Blogger will no doubt have loaded in a weird way - to see them in larger format.)