Singapore Design Week Showcases Imagination, Innovation, and Much More

Singapore is a city in motion—growing, exploring, and thinking about its future and position on the global stage. It embraces contrasts, with high-tech futuristic structures standing alongside traditional 20th-century shophouses and grand, white-painted colonial buildings from bygone eras. It also has a vision for design, seeking tangible impact and addressing quality of life, environmental imperatives, and the future of urbanism. Earlier this month, between September 11-21, Singapore Design Week was percolating with exhibitions, fairs, and a rich program amplifying the “Nation by Design” theme celebrating 60 years of the country’s independence. Southeast Asian design was front and center, with works and installations from innumerable creatives spanning more than a dozen countries.

Enter the DesignSingapore Council, running the show for all things Singapore Design Week and exploring the enduring role that design plays in shaping Singapore’s past, present, and future. “Singapore’s journey has always been guided by intention and imagination, and this year’s festival is a powerful reminder of that,” says Jody Teo, festival director of this year’s Singapore Design Week.  

In addition to planning the dynamic happenings around the city, the Singapore Design Council also helms the Design Futures Forum, a daylong symposium focused on sustainability and emerging technologies. Co-curated by Aric Chen, director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation, and Ong Ker-Shing, co-founder and director of Lekker Architects, the program was surprising, thought-provoking, and often unsettling. Spatial designer Feifei Zhou, for example, spoke about “non-human relations” and is co-curating an upcoming exhibition at Rotterdam’s Nieuwe Instituut titled “Fungi: Anarchist Designers.” Other speakers included Liam Young, whose provocative films are urgent examinations of current environmental questions; Theodoric Chew, co-founder of homegrown start-up Intellect, which has become Asia Pacific’s largest employee mental health benefits company; and Alice Bucknell, whose innovative video games let players take on the perspective of non-humans.

“There is a certain narrative about Singapore as a city, that it’s a highly designed place,” Chen says. “It’s a small island city-state, and necessity is often the mother of invention. It has had to invent itself and think about design in order to guide it towards the future.” He agrees that everything is being addressed in an accelerated fashion, which is increasingly resonating in the West. “In Singapore, you really see a concerted effort, in a bold way, to implement policies about biodiversity and in a top-down way, there is a conscious and brave effort to take things forward.”

With so much going on, it is important to also take a closer look at young designers. Their projects at the Open Design Dialogue (ODD)—curated by Jerry Goh, founding creative director of Studio Grain, and creative producer Guo Yao Hong—are a revelation. The outdoor installation Perspectives, designed by Kevin Teo and Reena Wong, requires two people to work together and form an image with seemingly random disks. The stunning Low Res Pavilion by Nous Nous, a temporary structure, showcases each design driven by the goal of reducing material waste and ensuring each element could find an afterlife. 

Mention must also be given to Nathan Yong, a Singaporean design pioneer who has a practice known both locally and globally. Edwin Low, an industrial designer by training and the founder of concept store Supermama, curated this year’s Emerge, a platform that gives visibility to Southeast Asian designers. “Fifteen years ago, I started Supermama and never looked back,” he shares. “I asked myself, how do I tell the Singaporean story? That’s when I started working with local designers. Objects between innovation and tradition.” Singaporean design is exploding, and moving quickly.