Vintage shopping malls
In a nation addicted to the new, a building from the early eighties can take on a certain vintage charm.
Lucky Plaza (built in 1981) is still a thriving mall along Orchard Road, Singapore's premier shopping drag. It caters to the migrant-worker community and, with its Filipino and Indonesian shops and eateries, domestic helper agencies, outlet clothing stores, and money changers, it gives an otherwise glitzy area some much-needed grounding. This is a place where shopping is less about conspicuous consumption and more about connecting to a faraway home.
Snacks and ingredients that bring the Philippines and Indonesia closer to the migrant worker in Singapore ©Wendy Gan 2025
Architecturally, the building is a good specimen of a type of mall popular in the eighties. There is an airy central atrium filled with natural light and a bubble lift that flows up and down non-stop with people looking curiously out (or not) of the lift’s windows.
The escalators are stacked at one end and the stairs at the other. The layout is open and uncluttered. The businesses facing the atrium with their frontages open to the passer-by enjoy the best light and the most foot traffic.
©Wendy Gan 2025
There is another phalanx of shops away from the atrium. Here the corridors are quiet and dark. Businesses are more low key. It is a mall of two dispositions: one bright and extroverted, the other dim and introspective.
©Wendy Gan 2025
That Lucky Plaza endures is poignant to me. I remember it from my childhood and, even though I have little reason to go there these days, it pleases me that it, in its low-rent glory, still stands.
