Each September, the notion of “Design” is recalibrated within the minds of Singaporeans, due to the DesignSingapore Council’s (DSG) Singapore Design Week (SDW) 2024. This 12 months’s theme focuses on the “Individuals of Design marketing campaign.” Sure, the artistic people behind their works, ideas, and useful objects get the limelight. Final 12 months’s theme spotlighted creating one thing for everybody by making issues “Higher by Design.”
The design pageant made its debut in 2005. For 2024, there can be three most important “design districts” — Bras Basah-Bugis, Marina and Orchard — for design aficionados to trot and get impressed from 26 September to six October. This pageant, organised by DSG, additionally represents Singapore on the United Nations Instructional, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) Inventive Cities Community. Our Litte Crimson Dot nation joined the community in 2015.
Whereas the on a regular basis layman may not be a skilled designer, DSG desires to ship the message that artistic individuals can come from all walks of life, defying stereotypical views that design is just relegated to actual designers. DSG’s thought is to seed design and innovation into peoples’ minds, invoking constructive change whereas making design democratic.
Annually, SDW turns into extra intensive, and this 12 months is not any exception. Whereas the variety of actions stays about the identical — 80 exhibitions, boards, and occasions — the present line-up is poised to have a better attain by way of its expanded format. Some 127,000 attendees attended final 12 months’s pageant.
A lot lauded designer Hans Tan, founding father of Hans Tan Studio and affiliate professor within the industrial design division on the Nationwide College of Singapore, curated the Brash Basah-Bugis showcase. There are about ten displays on this busy civic district. Located on the Nationwide Design Centre (NDC), you’ll discover varied designers from all around the world who’ve put collectively many fascinating installations.
The Bras Basah-Bugis — Individuals Of Design Showcase Sequence is curated by Mr Hans Tan, founding father of Hans Tan Studio and an affiliate professor within the industrial design division on the Nationwide College of Singapore. The collection collaborates with varied designers and options ten showcases within the district.
A part of the district explores the empowering nature of design by placing it within the palms of individuals from numerous backgrounds.
Marina District Comes To Life
SDW debuts within the Marina design district, the place design lovers can witness Marina Central and Marina Bay installations. At Suntec, Neufolk’s works pop up on the mall. The brains behind Neufolk are Mr Nathan Yong, founding father of Nathan Yong Design, and a crew of designers who’re bent on materialising an thought: Bridging Custom and Future in Design.
Neufolk combines “neu,” that means “newcomer,” with “people,” bringing frequent people and their concepts to conventional society. “It’s necessary for manufacturers to reinvent themselves repeatedly in immediately’s fast-paced, internet-driven world,” explains Yong.
As well as, he enthused that younger customers who lap up social media apps count on content material to be contemporary, participating and speedy. He emphasised that manufacturers should all the time search for methods to reinvent the retail expertise and develop novel concepts to attract eyeballs.
Yong and his collaborators — Aaa Studio and HaveFun Karaoke — have dreamed up contemporary and thrilling ideas for the Reimagining Retail Experiences showcase to focus on the youthful crowd.
As a part of the Reimagining Retail Experiences showcase at Neufolk within the Marina district, he and his collaborators paired design agency Aaah Studio with HaveFun Karaoke to create contemporary ideas, resembling a content material creation sales space with props focused on the youthful crowd.
The HaveFun Karaoke sales space expresses the various prospects of a karaoke room that’s not purely for singing but in addition a comfy and protected house for enjoyment, leisure and even inspiration for Instagram moments.
Design Orchard’s Fruits of Labour
The Orchard district is internationally famend for its buying, however by way of the artistic lens of two design impresarios, Mervin Tan and Cheryl Sim, from native design studio Plus Collaboratives, they’ve created Re-Route: Orchard (RR:OR) — this second version of Re-Route constructed upon the success of Re-Route: Little India again in 2022.
By way of 9 months of analysis on placemaking, the design couple deep-dived into understanding how city planners and residents formed public areas resembling Orchard Street.
Whereas Orchard Street is synonymous with buying, some underlying connections, specifically bodily, cultural, and social identities, needed to be uncovered and understood. An evolving relevance to international and native developments and authorities mandates tempers these.
Finally, RR:OR’s central theme stems from the thought of “adaptive reuse” — repurposing as an alternative of demolishing constructions. Working with their long-time shopper, the Singapore Tourism Board, the couple realised that conventional tour gross sales and advertising and marketing have to be artistic and progressive.
Ms Sim, 36, co-founder and design director of Plus Collaboratives, which specialises in spatial, graphic, and experiential design, defined that individuals’s appetites have modified. These people need an emotional connection to assist them determine a location and make it memorable.
The idea of adaptive reuse additionally helped the couple admire outdated venues whereas permitting for a brand new relevance to raise their values. The {couples}’ onerous work and analysis paid off: they got here up with greater than 30 points of interest — 13 installations, eight hidden gems, and 16 talks and workshops to sate curious attendees to RR:OR (reroutefest.com). The positioning supplies guests with a downloadable digital map out there throughout SDW 2024.
Ms Sim additionally felt that exploring a variety of opposites — new versus acquainted, pattern versus tradition, what’s on the floor and what’s in-depth — may assist individuals see Orchard Street with a brand new perspective
A superb instance of this concept: After buying at a luxurious retailer like Dior at Ion Orchard, you may stroll right into a 20-year-old family-run hen rice stall in Fortunate Plaza. Mr Tan, Plus Collaboratives’ co-founder and inventive director, emphasised the significance of RR:OR being adaptive as one needed to reimagine the chance for relevance. He curated these installations to exhibit how adaptive reuse works for designers, attendees and vacationers.
This 12 months’s RR:OR contains the Clancy Boutique Alteration Centre, the place attendees can uncover this time-honoured garments alteration enterprise, which has been in Far East Plaza since 1994. Situated in the identical constructing, Shashlik Restaurant can be a Russo-Hainanese culinary gem, opened in April 1986 by Hainanese cooks who labored within the Russian eatery Troika Restaurant earlier than it shuttered.
Mr Tan additionally labored with co-curators resembling vogue director Daniel Boey and a crew of 33 designers and illustrators to create novel concepts for road vogue. Dubbed “Avenue Vogue: Rain Prepared”, he curated college students’ works from Raffles Design Institute to current intriguing sartorial concepts impressed by Orchard Street’s historical past as an open canal. These vivid and progressive garments blended fashion and performance, offering contemporary insights that catered to local weather change and environmental challenges.
Don’t miss out on “Chairs Reimagined,” a artistic exhibition during which the standard and ubiquitous traditional kopitiam chair underwent imaginative modifications. Guests can gawk on the fascinating items which were remodeled to mirror social behaviours and the evolving wants of Singapore’s communities.
This 12 months’s pageant additionally options content material aligned with SDW’s three pillars: Design Futures, Design Market and Design Affect.
Design Futures will delve into the designs of our not-too-distant future. Mr Hans Tan emphasises that rising applied sciences, sustainability, and care are core segments of the Design Futures pillar, which has impacted his strategy.
“For the Design set up in the primary showcase, I added tradition as a result of I imagine design performs a pivotal position in shaping it,” he opines.
Situated on the Nationwide Design Centre (NDC), the exhibition is curated in line with 4 “tracks,” every centered on a definite theme: Rising Know-how, Care, Sustainability, and Tradition.
The EAT: Transformative Seeds exhibition at NDC is to not be missed. Curated by Fang Hu from China, she and her crew delved right into a meals design exhibition the place seeds resembling corn take centre stage. “Popped Grain Archive” by Yongxin Lai, China, is an thrilling set up that helps us perceive the cultural significance of seeds from the angle of style, sound, and gear design by way of interactive experiences, merchandise, and kinetic installations.
You get to see the grain extruder machine by Atelier Fang, the place grains resembling rice and corn are processed by way of extrusion gadgets to realize hanging tubes, spirals, and features.
There’s Singapore-based designer Benjamin Koh’s Zero Waste System: Expandable Porous Materials, the place he envisions utilizing a bio-based, expandable materials derived by way of fermentation to “develop” clothes immediately right into a closing form. Therefore, he exhibited metallic tins formed like T-shirts the place the fermentation materials might be grown. Speak about a self-sustaining vogue trade thought that might take off!
As well as, attendees can witness the works of major college college students and senior residents, a lot of which have expressed their artistic experiments by way of workshops performed by 4 design educators.
“This experiment in democratising design highlights that design sensibilities are accessible to all and may enrich varied contexts,” Mr Tan explains.
Alternatively, Design Market is an fascinating zone the place you may see international way of life developments by way of the lens of Southeast Asia’s design communities.
For extra info, go to: https://sdw.designsingapore.org, www.reroutefest.com, and https://marinacentral.com.sg/happenings/sdw2024_neu-folk/
Interval: 26 September to six October 2024.
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