ARI Working Paper Series

The article traces an historical relationship between modern architecture (particularly housing) and the condition of emergency. It argues for considering de-housing and re-housing as part of a history of mobilization, which taken in its broadest meaning – to render mobile – was among the most common state-citizen interactions of the twentieth century.

Beginning with positions and attitudes of European Modernism and moving through the Malayan Emergency to the policies of Singapore’s HDB, it suggests an underappreciated convergence between the politics of space and emergency around the act of habitation. It also fits Singapore’s mass re-housing campaign of the 1950s-1960s into the context of 19/20th century urban re-housing generally, and colonial / post-colonial politics in particular.