Table of contents for #26 in Design Anthology, Asia Pacific Edition

International, trendy and a blend of East and West: graphic design in Singapore is often viewed as indistinct and an inevitable outcome of its physical constraints. But beneath the surface, much of the discipline is by design, just like much of the city-state. While Singapore is exposed to global economic, social and cultural tides, the tropical island has developed a graphic design industry on its own terms just as it has reclaimed land from the sea to redefine its geography. As a port city dating back to the 13th century, Singapore has long had a need to support its commerce with graphic design. However, its modern expressions emerged only after the British established a trading post at the mouth of the Singapore River in 1819 and the city-state experienced an…

Fang Wei Low’s memories of growing up on a shophouse-lined street in one of Singapore’s vibrant neighbourhoods have shaped his distinct notion of a home. The founder and CEO of luxury co-living enterprise Figment, Low traces the origins of his company back to those formative years. All of Figment’s residences are refurbished heritage shophouses, envisioned as co-living spaces that capture this spirit of shophouse living for more mobile or even transient residents, with leases starting at just three months long. In conceptualising the Case Study Homes series, Low was inspired by his father’s Lorong 24A Shophouse Series, which he eventually took over and turned into Figment in 2019, and the pioneering mid-century Case Study Houses project in Los Angeles, in which Arts & Architecture magazine commissioned acclaimed architects to experiment…

Nestled in a tranquil exurb, this mid-century-inspired apartment in Martin Place Residences exudes a sense of intimacy. Rooted in the iconic modernist movement, the home embraces an alchemy of natural materials, clean lines and dynamic hues. It’s the masterstroke of local furniture and product designer Gabriel Tan, who has known the clients — a married couple — for some time, and who shares with them an unerring eye for enduring design and craft.‘I wanted to design a home that reflected their love for mid-century modern design and colours, but is at the same time contemporary and purpose-built for their lifestyle and personalities,’ Tan explains. The couple had visited several Case Study Houses in Los Angeles, and wanted the quintessential functionality and comfort of that seminal era for their own home.…

Flexform Tokyo Travertine walls, metal slat ceilings, dark walls and green spaces characterise Flexform’s new showroom, which remains in Tokyo’s tony Minami-Aoyama district but is now in a larger and more spacious building. The new flagship store boasts floor-to-ceiling glass panels separated by geometric yet deconstructed lines distinctive of modern Japanese architecture. Along with its signature furniture offering, the store also showcases Flexform’s outdoor collection, including daybeds, tables, sofas and accessories, for the first time in Japan. flexform.it Føerni Hong Kong Hong Kong-based start-up Føerni is an online subscription service offering furniture rental that promises lower costs and less commitment than traditional furniture stores. The label stocks standard pieces like sofas, chairs and beds, as well as home decor and appliances, from brands including Louis Poulsen, Muuto and HAY. Deliveries,…

Singapore’s skyline boasts an impressive collection of buildings designed by Pritzker Prize laureates and starchitects, including Thomas Heatherwick, Ole Scheeren, Norman Foster, Moshe Safdie, Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind, but beneath all that modern gloss, an older, more storied Singapore still pulses. This history is particularly evident in the small clutch of grand old hotels that dot the island. Individually, each represents a unique glimpse into Singapore’s colonial past, a veritable time capsule of how travellers of yore once toured the world. Collectively, they represent a remarkable, ongoing effort by Singapore’s urban planners, working with commercial developers, to balance historical value, contemporary relevance and future purpose. The first that comes to mind is Raffles, its glorious high-Victorian Italianate revival facade and interiors long a byword among the jet set for…

Curator Louis Ho Louis Ho isn’t just one of Singapore’s most experimental curators,he’s also the most dapper. Alongside his insightful exhibitions, the critic and curator is best known for his signature suspenders and bow ties made of everything from ceramic to Lego. This sartorial boundary-pushing befits his reputation for thinking outside the box, with projects such as the 2016 Singapore Biennale, which he co-curated. ‘I’m interested in specific topics that may not get a lot of airtime,’ says Ho, explaining that this includes art emerging from under-represented countries like Myanmar. Most recently, he’s been working on an exhibition exploring camp, kitsch and queer sensibilities in the socio-historical context of South East Asia, which recently opened at the ADM Gallery at Nanyang Technological University. ‘To the best of my knowledge, there…

Before they’d even begun building in 2017, the owners of this eye-catching home had two requirements: space and privacy. A style-conscious couple with two young children, they wanted their family home to be a sanctuary where they could escape the pace of their frenetic lives. The original site was fairly narrow, wedged between a mansion and a school, so achieving the sort of high-impact house they had in mind was a challenge. They hired architects Park + Associates to come up with a solution, and the firm’s proposal, a four-storey, concrete and glass U-shaped structure that would offer almost 1,000 square metres of living space, won them over. ‘When we initially took the project on, the owners were looking for a traditional rectangular home like the ones lining the rest…

Architect Ling Hao’s childhood home was a compound house in the city of Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia, that was built the year he was born. ‘My parents found a piece of land in the middle of nowhere, but right next to the old city, at the foot of a gentle mound of forest,’ says Hao. These verdant lands, as well as the modest two-storey dwelling’s open, colonnaded ground floor, were his playground. This memory deeply affects his architecture, which embraces that unbridled, luxuriant way of living. A recent project, titled Compound House, harks back to this subconscious longing. Anomalous in the context of Singapore’s ubiquitous insular houses, every day in this home is a camp-out in nature, where the mother cooks in a wall-less kitchen and the children observe plants…

If you Googled ‘humid house’ three years ago, the search would have mostly turned up results related to fungus in the home. Choosing it as a name for a botanical design studio may not have seemed like the best branding strategy to most, but John Lim, the founder and creative director of This Humid House, was quite insistent on it. ‘It was kind of an affront,’says the Singaporean botanical designer with a background in architecture. The pretty arrangements of temperate flowers that he was seeing seemed foreign on an island whose natural flora and foliage thrive in the uncomfortably thick, wet heat of tropical rainforests. ‘I really wanted to make something that had a sense of place,’ he says, and the studio’s name echoes just that. Driven by equal parts…

Singapore may be a nation of islands, but its oeuvre of remote, luxe island resorts pales in comparison to neighbouring Indonesia, a country whose 17,000 isles between the Indian and Pacific oceans will sate even the most intense wanderlust. One hour from the Lion City, on the northern coast of the Indonesian island of Bintan, is the refined Sanchaya. The resort is anchored by the Great House, whose black and white exterior recalls British army officers’ homes in Singapore and which contains suites, dining areas, a wine room and a bar. It opens to a jaw-dropping view out back: a 50-metre saltwater pool that seems to merge into the emerald sea beyond. Elsewhere, 30 villas and suites display influences from South East Asia, from dark teak interiors and Khmer glazed…

‘Singapore is a postmodern experiment in the making,’ says Sundaram Tagore, a New York-based gallerist with an outpost in the city. ‘You have to give it time, but so far they’re doing everything right.’ Unlike rival art capitals in the region, which have developed organically but struggled to get state support, Singapore’s government continues to pour an enormous amount of resources into its art infrastructure. What has resulted are world-class museums, an impressive biennale, a dedicated gallery hub and thriving art schools. Determined to become South East Asia’s reigning art capital, the city is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace. ‘Ten to fifteen years ago, our art scene existed in a bit of a bubble,’ says Shuyin Yang, director of ART SG, a new art fair due to launch…

‘Honest’ is a word Mikael Teh likes to use when talking about this residential project in Bedok. The principal of architecture and design firm Monocot Studio uses it to describe several facets of the apartment, from its style and character to the colours and materials used. On entering the apartment, the two-tone olive green and light grey walls of the living room immediately catch the eye. ‘We like using two-tone paint to create changes in colour and to give more texture and pattern,’ says Teh. What’s more, it honours the government-subsidised Housing & Development Board building in which the owners — a professional couple in their mid-30s — live. ‘The colours we chose here are similar to the dual tones used in Singapore’s HDB flats. We applied them honestly to…

From 7 April to 1 June, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore underwent what its government called a ‘circuit breaker’ — a period in which most shops closed, people were asked to stay home and public gatherings were restricted. I’ve not seen a scene so strange: the park is teeming with people, yet all is quiet. Everyone is masked, alone, hushed by caution. To me, it seems like public spaces have turned into highly personal, private spaces. There are no spritely exchanges among the brisk walkers. With see-saws and swing sets cordoned off, children play quietly on the grass on their own. The dog run is also closed, so there’s none of that rough-and-tumble or the pally ruckus of tail chasing. I wander to the park connector network,…