By Selene Abellé for Expat Life Singapore
Living in Singapore has changed the way I understand shelter.
I used to think of it as something private. Four walls. A locked door. A room where shoes came off and the day could finally loosen its grip. But here, home often begins before the key turns. It begins in the lift lobby, under the covered walkway, beside the letterboxes, in the open square of a void deck when the late sun slips beneath the block and everything ordinary grows briefly tender.
At golden hour, the void deck near my flat becomes less like a passage and more like a porch.
The concrete floor holds the day’s warmth. Light stretches across the pillars in soft rectangles. A bicycle leans against a wall with one handlebar turned inward, as if listening. Somewhere above, a window grille slides open. The sound is small and metallic, followed by the familiar hush of domestic life settling into evening.
An older man sits on a stone bench with a plastic bag beside him. He does not seem to be waiting for anyone, though perhaps he is. A child in school shoes drags one foot across the floor, making a faint rubber squeak before being called back by a voice from the lift. Two mynahs hop near the drain, confident in the way city birds often are.
Nothing much happens.
That is partly why I notice it.
The void deck is not designed to impress. It is not scenic in the usual way. It asks for no admiration. Most days, people move through it with groceries, umbrellas, lunch packets, folded strollers, phones pressed close to their faces. It is a place between places.
But at this hour, between heat and night, the space softens.
The light makes the pillars look less functional. The benches seem less hard. Even the noticeboard, with its curling paper and practical announcements, appears touched by something almost gentle. For a few minutes, the architecture stops being merely useful and becomes human.
Perhaps this is what settling into a city really means. Not mastering it. Not collecting its landmarks. Not explaining it neatly to visitors. But allowing certain corners to become emotionally familiar without asking them to be beautiful.
A void deck teaches this quietly. It holds the shared life of a block without making a performance of it. People pass through, pause, wait, sit, return. Their routines leave no dramatic mark, only a kind of accumulated presence.
After a while, even passing through begins to feel like belonging.
So the next time you cross a void deck near evening, try not to hurry. Let the light reach the floor before you do. Notice the bench, the bicycle, the small sounds above you. For a moment, stand in that open space beneath other people’s homes and let it feel, gently, like part of your own.
