The Singapore Cricket Club has been many things to many people since 1852: colonial bastion, postwar social hub, multicultural members’ institution. The silhouette of its low-slung clubhouse on Connaught Drive overlooking the Padang is among the most recognisable in the city. What it has almost never had, over those 174 years, however, is an interior that kept pace with the ambitions of its membership. That changed this past April when Rashi Tulshyan, the young founder of Singapore’s Studio HP, shut the doors of the Main Lounge for 10 days and emerged with something the club’s members almost certainly didn’t see coming.
Tulshyan didn’t wait to be discovered. A Parsons School of Design graduate who built her studio from scratch over nearly a decade, she keeps close tabs on what’s happening across Singapore’s design scene and caught wind of the club’s plans to refurbish the Main Lounge, its principal gathering space. She pitched hard, and more than once. “Multiple rounds,” she said. “Sharing a very clear vision was what essentially sealed the deal.”
Walking into the Main Lounge for the first time, she found a room of beautiful bones – classical cornices, dark panelled timber walls, handsome flooring, a well-loved bar – let down by everything layered on top of them. The last serious rethink had happened around 2003, part of a S$17 million (US$13.33 million) structural redevelopment that was itself the first substantial change to the building in almost 120 years. Since then, the lighting, furniture and carpets had quietly aged, and it showed. “The dated interiors were doing an injustice to what was actually a really impressive space,” Tulshyan said. “It just desperately needed the upgrade.”