Why is brick not used commonly in Singapore, but more commonly used in countries like USA?
Answer:
Reason : Wood from Malayasia / Burma / Indonesia is easily available for construction at cheaper rate than concrete and local government has not yet banned woodhouses for being fireprone even in densely populated city corners .
As tiny island can not provide good soil digging areas for enough bricks , brick fields at Singapore are a closed chapter longback .
Its all about raw materials.
Local building materials always predominate, locally. If the soil of the Singapore region doesn't naturally make good brick, it's not going to be a common material. (Being an island, I imagine it's too sandy and not clay-y enough).
You don't usually see real brick houses in forested areas (or didn't before architects and standardized housing specs became the norm for domestic buildings), and you don't see wood homes (made of real wood, not aluminium) in areas where brick is most popular.
And where you do see them in equal shares, it's either an area where the forest meets the clayfields, or, more likely, a planned development.
No idea if brick is even made in Singapore. If not, THAT might have a lot to do with it, too!
contrary to common myth about Singapore. the island city state is more of a cement jungle than wooded tropical forest.
most of the constructions of the past 20-25 years are mainly reinforced concrete structures. This include small multi-storey government build HDB apartments to tall skyscrapers of 72 stories.
most of the material, granite and sand, are regional import. The last granite quarry work stops in the late 90s, and there's hint of reopening of one of the old quarry again.
Bigger country, read availability of natural resources of sand, will naturally have easier access to bricks. and this in turn having its own brick making industry and supply line.
direct answer to sub-question, there's no big scale brick manufacturer left in Singapore, why would one make bricks when there's no raw material for bricks in Singapore?
Singapore is in an earthquake zone, big time! You can run rebar thru the holes in concrete brick, but for the smaller red brick there is none and they tend to fall apart when a shaker hits. A lot of earthquake prone US cities have cut down on brick facades, too.
An internet search only turned up Lin BoSeng and his biscuit and brick manufacturing company, but it went out of business after WWII. But there are clay brick manufactures in Tiawan.
Singapore is also near the equator and most hot humid sites on islands didn't use brick because it kept in the heat. This was before A/C. (Just a guess, there)
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