RETERRITORIALIZING CHINESE LIVING SPACE APARTMENTS IN SINGAPORE

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Home can be more than a house or place to live. A home is a house that can
give a meaningfull of life. And as in the society, a home can make a person become a
social person. A home is a place where a person can express its feelings privately
(personal) and socially (public). The Chinese people believed in the concept of
cosmology, sacred and profane, the origins of the world and directionality of
relationship within the family. What the Chinese people belived, was adopted in their
traditional houses. The Chinese traditional houses give a concrete form of significant
ethical relations between the horizontal and vertical hierarchy. The shape of the
traditional Chinese houses has a unique arrangement of space to protect their family
from outsiders, and create a good relationship within their family and God. This is
why the Chinese traditional houses have a wall to protect from the outside, an
ancestor whorship in the main hall, a courtyard to worship God and bedrooms that
are connected. The Chinese cultures, the concepts and the arrangement of spaces
become a sign to show their territoriality of private and public space.
Due to flocking of population in Singapore, lack of space and modernity,
the Singaporean Chinese are rapidly replacing one-story traditional homes to an
apartment. No more the old and big extended family pattern. They break up of the
family into separate living units. This phenomenas become reterritorialization for the
Chinese living space. The reterritorialization of living space such as putting the
God’s worship outside their apartment’s door or the corridor, the service area
(kitchen) that used to be in private area and place it the public area of the house.

Keywords: Territory, Reterritory, Chinese House, Apartments, Singapore