It’s the final week to subscribe to BACKYARD: Volume 6, featuring reports by Daniel Chong, Wu Yanrong and Faiz Bin Zohri.
Subscriptions will close on 22 April 2026. After this date, Volume 6 will not be publicly available.
Reserve your copy soon, only 50 copies available. Orders will be shipped out by end-May (Overseas shipping is not available).
Link in bio to subscribe.
Subscriptions to reserve a copy of BACKYARD: Volume 6 will close on 22 April.
The sixth volume brings us to Hong Lim Park, Lavender and Khatib Central featuring reports by Daniel Chong, Wu Yanrong and Faiz Bin Zohri
@iisdannychong@wu.yanrong@stable.unstable
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BACKYARD is a physical folder of reports by artists stepping into the role of reporters of their neighbourhoods.
Designed by @gideon_jamie_
Link to the subscription form in bio.
BACKYARD: Volume 6 featuring Daniel Chong, Wu Yanrong, Faiz Bin Zohri—Subscriptions are now open.
BACKYARD will come in the form of a physical folder housing the 3 featured artist reports as a stack of A4 prints.
Each copy will be priced at SGD$20, and due to limited availability, only 50 copies are available per volume.
Link to subscription form to BACKYARD: Volume 6 in bio.
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Volume 6 will ship out to subscribers by end-May only to local addresses based in Singapore. International shipping not available.
BACKYARD is thrilled to announce the line up for Volume 6, featuring reports by Daniel Chong, Wu Yanrong and Faiz Bin Zohri.
If you would like to subscribe to a copy, the subscription form will open this Thursday (2 April), 7:00PM SGT. Volume 6 will shipped to subscribers by the end of May 2026.
@iisdannychong@wu.yanrong@stable.unstable
𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘶𝘮 𝘖𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘗𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘥
The Yang One
Neighbourhood: Bidadari
(For Alex)
For years, every sojourn out of Woodleigh and every return home was bookmarked by fear and the sight of Catholic gravestones rising beside the bus stop at Bidadari Cemetery. After the exhumation, the former cemetery slowly transformed into an open-ended site for random activity, its open pastures holding promise for everyone who passed through. From the top of double-decker buses, I witnessed Gurkhas jogging, convent girls springing up from the grass for their CCA warm-ups, newlyweds posing for eternity, away from the telephoto lenses of birdwatchers.
Amid rising property prices, the wave of resale flats entering the market, and contemporary attitudes towards public housing as both a political barometer and a potential source of rapid capital gains and private wealth accumulation, returning to the stringently repurposed Bidadari Estate stirs conflicting feelings and a sense of yearning. I often wonder who that tombstone hovering at the edge of the bus stop belonged to. That fixture of my life watched me grow up; observed me chasing after a flasher on the bus who vanished into Potong Pasir; saw me flail my arms one too many times to flag a bus down.
I wonder where they went after the earth moved.
𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘶𝘴 𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘛𝘰𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘵
Seth Cheong
Neighbourhood: Bukit Timah
Along Dunearn Road, a bus stop sits just beside a public park, its toilet located no more than thirty metres away from the bus stop.
Because of this proximity, the bus stop operates in a way that extends beyond its usual function. During off-peak hours, it is not uncommon to see buses pull into the edge of the trapezium-shaped layby with their hazard lights on, halting there slightly longer than a standard stop. A small number of commuters will then patiently wait while the bus captain steps away from the vehicle, crosses into the park’s toilet to relieve themself, before returning to resume the route.
The scene is ordinary and procedural. The bus stop continues to function as infrastructure, but also as a site of temporary suspension. Movement pauses and time stretches for a few minutes. The short distance between bus stop and park’s toilet adds another layer to the space, reminding us that transport systems are sustained not only by schedules and machinery, but by bodies that also require maintenance.
𝘈 𝘚𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘝𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘵 3 𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘯’𝘴 𝘙𝘰𝘢𝘥
Berny Tan
Neighbourhood: Farrer Gardens
Farrer Gardens is a small public housing estate in Bukit Timah that was built in the 1970s. The estate is not unfamiliar to me—my family has been patronising its market and food centre for at least 25 years—but I only recently decided to move here, and saw the inside of the flats for the first time last year. That was when I realised that almost every set of windows was designed with an external concrete overhang, subdivided by short concrete beams. This creates small downward-facing vents above each window, likely to allow air to circulate even while windows are closed, maintaining privacy and protection from the elements.
Now that air conditioning in homes is ubiquitous, what once might have been useful has become at best an architectural quirk. When contemplating how to approach this in my ongoing renovation, I looked upwards from street level to check how my neighbours had dealt with this feature. To my surprise, I could see not only the variations in their methods (to seal the vents or not, and how), but also the irregularities of the vents themselves. Uneven in length and width, and at times curved when they should be rectangular, they must have been hastily and inexpertly constructed during a period of intense urban development in Singapore.
This diagram records my observations of these vents across every unit in my block.
We present a survey of how residents in the Farrer Gardens public housing estate deal with the built-in vents above their windows. In Bukit Timah, bus captains occasionally pull over at a bus stop along Dunearn Road for a quick toilet break. Meanwhile in Bidadari, the transformation of a former cemetery into a public housing estate stirs conflicting feelings of memory and loss.
BACKYARD: Volume 5 features Berny Tan, Seth Cheong, The Yang One. BACKYARD is designed by gideon-jamie.
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BACKYARD: Volume 5 has been shipped out. Thank you to Berny, Seth, The Yang One, Gideon, Jamie, Jin Tian and every subscriber for your contribution and support.
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@bernytlm@4seth@mrcogito@gideon_jamie_
It’s the final week to subscribe to BACKYARD: Volume 5, featuring reports by Berny Tan, Seth Cheong and The Yang One.
Subscriptions will close on 22 February 2026. After this date, Volume 5 will not be publicly available.
Reserve your copy soon, only 50 copies available. Orders will be shipped out by end-March (Overseas shipping is not available).
Link in bio to subscribe.
Subscriptions to reserve a copy of BACKYARD: Volume 5 will close on 22 February.
The fifth volume tells us tales of Farrer Gardens, Bukit Timah and Bidadari featuring reports by Berny Tan, Seth Cheong and The Yang One
@bernytlm@4seth@mrcogito
-
BACKYARD is a physical folder of reports by artists stepping into the role of reporters of their neighbourhoods.
Designed by @gideon_jamie_
Link to the subscription form in bio.
BACKYARD: Volume 5 featuring Berny Tan, Seth Cheong, The Yang One—Subscriptions are now open.
BACKYARD will come in the form of a physical folder housing the 3 featured artist reports as a stack of A4 prints.
Each copy will be priced at SGD$20, and due to limited availability, only 50 copies are available per volume.
Link to subscription form to BACKYARD: Volume 5 in bio.
-
Volume 5 will ship out to subscribers by end-March only to local addresses based in Singapore. International shipping not available.
BACKYARD is thrilled to announce the line up for Volume 5, featuring reports by Berny Tan, Seth Cheong and The Yang One.
If you would like to subscribe to a copy, the subscription form will open this Friday (30 January), 7:00PM SGT. Volume 5 will shipped to subscribers by the end of March 2026.
@bernytlm@4seth@mrcogito
