The Insider: The windmill at Holland Village

A: After learning that the wooden windmill atop the Holland Village Shopping Centre is actually a tourist attraction of sorts, I didn’t even bother to repress the urge to laugh. Thanks to various syndicated Channel 8 TV programmes filmed around the area, the windmill has undeservedly reeled in visitors from Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. So, what’s the deal? 

First things first: no, Holland Village isn’t named after the windmill. The stout structure – a little over a storey high – was only erected five years ago, after the building managers, Eng Tiong Company Pte Ltd, felt that a Dutch-themed revamp was in order. And no, it’s not powered by a giant hamster; the only thing inside its tiny body is machinery. 

As far as I know, the windmill serves no purpose and is an embarrassment to the fine energy-generating work that real windmills do. And on an aesthetic level, it’s just so ‘extra’ (in local terms) up there, protruding like an awkward wooden afterthought. So my photographer and I headed to Holland Village to see how much the tenants in the shopping centre knew about their local landmark. 

The ground-floor tenants seemed blissfully unaware of its existence. Admittedly, it’s hard to see it when you’re inside working all day, but don’t they ever leave? And look up? The BreadTalk cashier wasn’t even aware that she worked in a building with a windmill on it. A Bee Cheng Hiang staffer refused to comment and stared at us as if we were asylum escapees. Thankfully, it was a totally different story on the upper level. I’m not sure whether it’s because they’re physically closer to the damn thing, but the second-floor tenants were slightly more up to speed on the little piece of Holland on top of their building. 

One shopkeeper, Sharon, was vocal about the windmill’s uselessness. She observed that if it were to actually generate electricity for the shopping centre, it probably wouldn’t even, well, work. ‘We don’t get much wind [in Singapore], and we’d be in darkness!’ Next door, retailer Chris admitted that she had only discovered the windmill ‘quite recently’, despite having worked there for a year. However, she did agree that it would be ‘nice’ if it served a purpose. 

Security guard Nathan weighed in with a bit more authority. The windmill runs on a programmed timer from noon to 1pm, and again from 6pm to 7pm. The blades move lazily enough to fool anyone into thinking the windmill is being moved by the breeze. When asked if it would be a good idea to re-wire it so it functioned properly, he firmly disagreed, ‘because it would be too dangerous to run at higher speeds’. (At this point the crazy, out-of-control helicopter scene from Mission Impossible popped into my head.) 

Not only was my original scepticism confirmed, but the silly thing is actually powered by electricity – kind of inappropriate for a windmill. What will they think of next?