Care to join me?

Chinese immigrants who landed in Singapore in the early 19th century often arrived with nothing: many turned to clans for help. These guild-like groups of kith and kin furnished new arrivals with accommodation and employment in exchange for membership and over the years evolved into powerful co-operatives that shaped the city, built schools, helped hospitals and underwrote businesses. Today many clans survive and their headquarters line Bukit Pasoh, a road on the edge of Singapore’s Chinatown. It’s this legacy that the members-only Straits Clan club, which opened in March in four converted shop-houses close by, hopes to continue.

“We are not creating a clan that represents the past,” says co-founder Wee Teng Wen, managing partner of Singapore’s homegrown hospitality kingpin The Lo & Behold Group. “We’re trying to achieve what they stood for but we’re modernising it and making it relevant.”

With the help of husband-and-wife design firm Takenouchi Webb, Teng and co-founders Aun Koh and Sally Sim turned an art deco hotel into a tropical-themed venue with spaces for members to meet, dine or entertain.

“We wanted this to be a place where members could spend the day from morning until night,” says Teng. A dedicated lift by the lobby whisks the enlisted up to the members-only spaces where they can start their day with a workout in the third-floor gym (which opens at 07.00), followed by breakfast at one of the club’s three restaurants. There’s an all-day casual courtyard bar and bistro with Singaporean comfort food, a dining room serving a produce-driven Asian menu, and a lobby café – the only space open to the public – which offers healthy dishes and teas. Its menu is insired by Thunder Tea Rice, a dish that was brought to Singapore by Chinese migrants.

The third floor houses a reading lounge and meeting rooms while evenings can be spent unwinding at the spa or in a tasting room that focuses on wines and whiskies. There are also entertainment spaces that include a games room, karaoke lounges and a small private disco, should the mood take you.

Straits Clan has recruited a cross-section of Singapore’s creative and business community; it’s headed by 30 committee members spanning multiple generations and industries including an actress, singer, museum curator, playwright and film-maker, as well as food, beverage and tech entrepreneurs. But it also aims to be public facing, despite employing a paid-for membership model. A changing programme of activities in the building’s attic will push public events for entrepreneurs, performances and food-focused pop-ups in order to create new conversations.

“There are so many interesting people doing exciting things [in Singapore] but their pursuits are increasingly siloed,” says Teng. “There’s a relevance to having a place where we can be exposed to new ideas and challenged in different ways.”