Open-air settings

Courtyards and gardens: where the sky is part of the room

Some heritage buildings are remembered for a grand hall. Others are remembered for the moment you step outside: into a courtyard open to the sky, a cloister lined with arches, or a lawn on a hill. This chapter looks at five places where open space is central to the experience.

Open-air settings in Singapore come with an obvious condition. Tropical weather is warm and humid throughout the year, and heavy showers can arrive with little warning. Every outdoor plan needs an indoor or covered fallback, agreed in advance. That said, evening gatherings in a courtyard or garden can be among the most memorable a historic building can offer, precisely because the architecture was designed for a climate like this one.

House of Tan Yeok Nee: two courtyards in a Teochew house

The traditional southern Chinese house is organised around courtyards that bring light and air into the halls. At the House of Tan Yeok Nee, the central residence has two courtyards set along a symmetrical axis. In the entrance courtyard, koi sculptures at the roof junctions drain rainwater from their mouths, a reminder that these spaces were built to handle tropical downpours.

The 2024 restoration removed glass panels that had been installed around the main courtyard in 1999–2000, reinstating its reading as an open space. The venue lists a Front Courtyard and a Rear Courtyard as event spaces, as well as Karim Hall, which has its own rear courtyard. The pairing of a covered hall with an adjoining courtyard is a practical answer to the weather question.

CHIJMES: cloisters and lawns

CHIJMES on Victoria Street occupies the former Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. The compound grew around Caldwell House, a residence designed by George Drumgoole Coleman, and includes a Gothic chapel with stained glass. The convent ran a school here for generations before the site was converted. Caldwell House and the chapel are a National Monument. See CHIJMES.

Today the compound is a dining quarter, and its arcaded walkways and sunken lawns make it seem like a small walled town in the middle of the city. The chapel, now often called CHIJMES Hall, is the space most associated with weddings. Because restaurants and bars share the grounds, a gathering here sits within a lively setting rather than a private one.

Fort Canning Centre: a barracks on the hill

Fort Canning Hill has some of the longest history of any site in Singapore. Known in Malay as Bukit Larangan, the Forbidden Hill, it is associated with the fourteenth-century kingdom of Singapura, and later held a British fort and military buildings. Fort Canning Centre is a former British barracks block from the early twentieth century, set within Fort Canning Park, which is managed by the National Parks Board.

The centre’s long verandahs and the surrounding lawns make it a natural setting for gatherings that move between indoors and outdoors. The park setting brings trees, slopes and fresh air, along with the practical matter of paths and gradients for guests who find stairs difficult. Fort Canning MRT station is at the foot of the hill.

Alkaff Mansion: a house above the city

Alkaff Mansion stands on Telok Blangah Hill, near Mount Faber and the Southern Ridges. It was built in the early twentieth century by the Alkaff family, prominent Arab merchants in Singapore, as a hilltop retreat. The house has been used as a restaurant and event space for many years under different operators.

Its appeal is setting: greenery on all sides and the sense of being away from the city while still within it. Its constraint is the same: access is by road up the hill, so transport for guests matters more here than at a central venue.

Peranakan Museum: a school with a front lawn

The Peranakan Museum on Armenian Street is housed in the former Tao Nan School, an early twentieth-century school building founded by the Hokkien community. Its symmetrical façade, with columns and verandahs, looks out over a small front lawn. The building is a National Monument and reopened as a museum of Peranakan culture after renovation. See Peranakan Museum.

The building’s open-air character is more modest than at CHIJMES or Fort Canning, but its verandahs and its place among the older streets of the Bras Basah and Bugis area give it a pleasing, neighbourly scale.

Questions specific to open spaces

• Wet-weather plan. Which covered room is held as a fallback, and by when must the decision to move inside be made?
• Sound. Courtyards amplify and also carry sound. Ask about limits on amplified music and how late it may continue, especially near homes.
• Surfaces. Old paving, timber thresholds and lawns each react differently to heavy furniture, staging and stiletto heels.
• Lighting. Courtyards can be dark after sunset. Ask what lighting is in place and what may be added without fixing to historic walls.
• Neighbours and the public. Shared grounds, such as at CHIJMES or in a public park, mean other visitors may be close by.

For a fuller list of questions, see Choosing a Heritage Venue.