An iconic building in Singapre, Rochor Centre comprises 4 colourful flat blocks (which is yellow, blue, green and red colour) and three floors of shop and office. The building was built in the 1990s. More than 500 Housing Development Board (HDB) Flats in Rochor Centre will have to be demolished by Year 2016 to make way for an additional express highway. The HDB blocks used to be white, until the early 1990s when they became the iconic buildings of the Rochor area after being painted in an upgrading program by the government. Singapore is a rapid developing country. Its skyline is ever changing. As such, buildings are replaced as often as the country grows. The Rochor Centre colourful flats are some of the buildings that have received this "fate". It's a pity that there is no more Kampong left in Singapore (except for the last surviving Kampong Buangkok - refer to my August 2011 blog post) where our younger generation can get to see how it was like living in the 1950s/60s or how or where their grandparents and parents once lived. That's the price of modernisation when a country seeks to progress..... The atmosphere at Rochor Centre is lively and the shops are bustling with many people. The four flats themselves are still in good condition. The paint looked freshly painted and well-maintained. It is definitely well worth a trip down to capture the place before the demolition given its historical value and importance to the residents and to Singapore in general. It will be a real sad sight and time for the residents living at Rochor Centre when the date draws near to the demolition. Especially when they mean more than just apartments to the some people who lived there over the past decade. Its demolition will signal the end for a building which offered them some of the elderly residents and set them on the path to a future they might not have thought possible before they were first handed the keys to one of the 500+ flats.
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