Democratising Singapore Design

July 12, 2014

In the three years since S u p e r m a m a opened in 2011, it has expanded from a design retail store to an incubator for Singapore designers and designs as well. It recently re-opend its original store at Seah Street, which had been turned into a workspace for designers and artists for over a year. We spoke to S u p e r m a m a founder Edwin Low about the renewed vision for his store, and how it will stand out in an increasingly crowded market of Singapore design products.

A former design lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic, Edwin and his wife quit their jobs in 2011 to open S u p e r m a m a. | S u p e r m a m a

Why is Supermama@Seah Street re-opening as a store after it was turned into a residency space in November 2012?

We shifted our retail operations to the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) after running our flagship store at Seah Street for two years. While the retail store at SAM creates a greater awareness to local and international audiences, I find the customer’s pace of interaction (people-people, people-object, people-space) within the shop pretty rushed. I kinda missed the pace in Seah St where customers literally slow down just by stepping into the shop — which creates a more intimate and natural setting to form conversations over the products we carry.

There is also a practical reason as we are transiting from the current shop space at SAM’s 8 Queen Street to the official SAM shop within the main building. We will be taking over the official SAM shop from September and re-opening Seah Street allow us to reframe our approach, and create a better retail/gallery experience before embarking on the next one.

How is the re-opened Supermama@Seah Street different?
Previously, we ran it more like a select shop where we curated a range of labels within a space — a credible, but not exactly sustainable model for a shop. In the past year, we have gained significant access to many craft facilities in Japan and also created our own label, Democratic Society (DS). Currently, we are focused on presenting our labels and the maker’s production capabilities to our customers.

We have also retained the residency space, and I think it is pretty refreshing for customers to actually have a glimpse into the work studio of artists and designers.

Who has taken up residency in Supermama@Seah Street and what were some projects that have come out of it?
So far, we’ve had Dawn Ng (artist), Olivia Lee (industrial designer), Melvin Ong (desinere), Tiffany Loy (parasol bags),Jotham Koh (photographer). Their projects include collaborations under our DS Label, e.g. Dawn created a collection of tea towels using fabric made with a textile company based in Nagoya, Japan. Melvin was one of the designers who took part in our “Singapore Icons” project, a collection of porcelain produced with a label in Arita, Japan. Tiffany did an exhibition on “textile embroidery machine,” while Jotham’s is currently presenting his first public work, “Craftsman,” for our re-opening.

You’ve been involved in creating Singapore design products for some time, beginning from “Singapore Souvenirs” (2009), a speculative proposal on what gifts from this city-state could be. Is the Democratic Society label you’ve started a successful implementation of these early ideas? How is it different?
For DS Label, it is strictly about stories (past or current) that can be communicated through objects. I’m intrigued by the study of material culture in our social context — I like the fact that objects which surround us are an extension of who we are, which ultimately defines us. For instance, I visited Arita, a porcelain town in Kyushu, Japan, and I was totally bemused by how a material — porcelain — plays such a huge role in defining the culture and lifestyle of the people living in the town. So for DS Label, I wanted to introduce a new material typography in Singapore and see the reaction to it. Can it be accepted? Can I create a new identity? Can this collection go into the daily lives of people? How would they fit in, etc.As industrial designers, it is only natural for us to want to create a label much like Muji, however, there is not much context for us to do so. Not until the Singapore Souvenirs (SS) project. I would say that the DS Label is a progression from SS. For SS, it was a pretty green attempt by a local design collective to create meaningful content, and many of the ideas were one-off, almost random, and across many mediums — which is probably the beauty of the project.

How have DS products been received by both Singaporeans and tourists? Are they selling well?
Pretty overwhelming, I must say. As I wrote this reply, I met a customer who tore out the page with a writeup of our products from the Singapore Airline in-flight magazine to look for us. To be blunt, the DS Label is possibly the only label and collection of products I have in my shop that is commercially viable.

DS is not the only producer of Singapore design products these days. What differentiates your products from others?
Personally, I find most producers still skimming the surface, mostly playing up on bold colours and nostalgia to sell. I think we can go beyond that.

Accompanying DS Label’s newest porcelain plate, “One Singapore,” is this booklet consisting of archival images from the National Archives of Singapore. The book is not for sale because of copyright restrictions but can be obtained when customers order the plate. | S U P E R M A M A

For DS Label, I think about longevity — both in its artistic direction and as a business model, which is why the tie-up with multi-generational craft facilities in Japan plays a vital role in the setup. We also spend considerable amount of time researching (sometimes with support from the National Archives of Singapore (NAS)) and communicating the rich content behind every artifact. Take our recently launched “OneSingapore” porcelain piece for example, we did not just provide a writeup on the icons, but worked closely with NAS to sift out archival images to create a story booklet that communicates the stories behind the icons — so much so that I have customers requesting to purchase the booklet too.

Another approach I take is to involve as many designers as possible. This is why I decided on the name “Democratic Society”, it is a label defined by many designers and artists. That is when the design language for the label become “democratised.” It’s a language owned by many people. With this, I can potentially reach out to a wider audience.

The DS model of applying concepts by Singapore designers on to Japanese crafted products seems to play to the strengths of both countries’ design capabilities. As an industrial designer yourself, do you think this is the best model forward for Singapore’s design industry or should we also develop made-in-Singapore products too?
I think it differs from industry to industry. For an industry which involves years of training or requires a large amount of space, we have to take a collaborative approach. Porcelain is one such product type/ industry. The facility in Arita is so massive that it’ll not make sense (cents) to have it in Tokyo, let alone Singapore. However, if you are looking at a trade such as leather making, letter press, etc., then it makes sense to develop the capabilities of making in Singapore.

We do also need to look at production volume. Personally, I feel that it is good to develop artisanal facilities in Singapore.

You’ve run a business retailing Singapore design for three years now. What are some challenges and issues you continue to face?
I do not want to sound pretentious, but I was completely dumbfounded by this question. I enjoyed what I do so much that I don’t see challenges as separate from the joy of running the business. I wish to say high rental cost blah blah… but these issues are not unique to my trade, everyone is facing the same thing, so it’s not exactly an issue when everyone is facing the same issue, isn’t it?

From now till then

June 9, 2014

What will Singapore look like in 2030? That is the question in the minds of many Singaporeans nowadays. The government made the nation sit up and reflect on its future when it released reports in January 2013 on how the city-state could possibly change in the next decade and a half: not only would there be more people, land use would also be more intensive.

For many, it was shocking to envision such a city. How could Singapore take anymore development when signs of aging are starting to show just two years before it turns 50 in 2015?

Over the last few years, its highly reliable infrastructure broke down several times, leading to flooded streets and disrupted train services. Last year, it witnessed its first industrial strike in decades, led by bus drivers recruited from China, who have become a common sight in a city increasingly reliant on migrant workers. The once squeaky clean government has also come under scrutiny with several of its honchos facing corruption accusations. Most recently, a Member of Parliament from the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) resigned over an extra-marital affair. This triggered a by-election which saw the opposition party gain yet another seat in the government. While the PAP was the only party in power since independence for over two decades, there are now 7 elected from the opposition Workers’ Party — albeit a tiny fraction out of a total of 87 seats.

Such cases have led observers living in Singapore to go as far as to suggest that the city is living in a “new normal”. It may be premature, but it has certainly got Singaporeans thinking about possibilities. The government has even tried to harness this energy by recently initiating a “National Conversation”, promising to listen to what Singapore citizens wanted, so that it can shape its future policies.

As part of this new generation of Singaporeans who are in the 20s and 30s, I do hear murmurings from my peers who envision a different city from what we grew up in. While those before us may have emerged from the oft-told struggle in which Singapore went from Third World to First, we grew up in a city that became a global city in the ‘90s, renowned for its efficiency and roaring economic success. While we may have worshipped the Western world then and were proud to have made English our language of choice, the tides have changed two decades on. Singapore finds itself looking towards Asia for its future. We now find ourselves — grandchildren of immigrants from Asia — caught in-between our historical roots with the region and how comfortably assimilated we have become with the Western world.

The truth, perhaps, is we are rootless — disconnected from our ancestors with not much else in Singapore to latch on to either. It is perhaps why so many of my peers and I have started to mine our histories to find out who we are. Whether it is the love for all things retro or a kind of wide-eyed wonder towards anything from the past, we often seem trapped in a nostalgia for a past we never lived through, but yearn to have grown up in. Any news of the impending demolishing of an old place in Singapore becomes an opportunity for us to whip out cameras and video recorders to stake our ‘memory‘ of a city lost to the future.

This question of who we are and who is this city becomes even more pronounced as Singaporeans and Singapore become more cosmopolitan. Our insecurity and inability to say who we are shows in how xenophobic we are nowadays — a kind of refusal to reflect on who we are, but instead assert the claim that they are not us.

In these uncertain times, I find comfort in seeing other Singaporeans getting their hands dirty to create change. This city guide is an attempt to map out some of these efforts, and help us navigate the possible Singapores that are emerging. From its people, places and phenomena, there are signs of what the future holds for this city.

Nguan’s Singapore sets the tone with his pictures that captures the mood of Singaporeans as they go about their everyday lives. Two interviews with The Thought Collective and studioKALEIDO give insights to the new values and ideas that are shaping the city’s future, while August 9 Portraits by Sam & Sam reflects the wishes its citizens have for the nation as recorded on its birthday last year.

A tour of spaces in Singapore captures how the city’s landscape is changing as well. In Wide Open Possibilities, experience up-and-coming neighbourhood Jalan Besar as mapped out by local independent travel guide alter:sg, while a fictional essay from the literary magazine Ceriph, shows an aspect of the city through the eyes of a young Singapore writer.

Finally, in Anew Singapore, we explore some of the ongoing trends in the city as well as its design, magazine, food, and music scenes that hint at the values that matter to young Singaporeans today what might define their tomorrows.

When one flips back at this guide in 2030, how much of Singapore will we recognise? The journey there starts now.

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Written in 2013 for The Alpine Review as part of a proposed city guide on Singapore. The section was never published. Thanks to Nguan, Dan Koh, Shin Lin, Rebecca Toh, Iliyas Ong, Samuel He, Sam Chin, Benjamin Koh, Winnie Wu, and Amanda Lee-Koe for their help on the guide.

Thinking Outside the Shipping Container

May 14, 2014

Giuseppe Lignano has no architect friends. When not at work, the founding partner of architecture firm LOT-EK would rather hang out with people outside the industry instead.

School teachers, businessmen, chefs and even housewives — his love for meeting people from diverse backgrounds and cultures mirrors the industrial bricolage his studio has become famous for. While most architecture firms design buildings to be made of glass, concrete and steel, LOT-EK has used kitchen sinks as cabinets, petroleum trailer tanks as bedrooms, and stainless steel truck bodies as homes. Over the last two decades, the studio Lignano started with his long-time collaborator, Ada Tolla, has been turning non-traditional architecture elements into standout designs.

“I like to be more of an outsider in everything I do,” says Lignano, looking smart in a fitting blue shirt and dark denim jeans. Even the clothes on the 50-year-old reflect how the gay man has always seen himself outside of New York city’s straight “white-male dominated” architecture industry with “their all black outfits”.

Lignano first came to the United States with Tolla after they graduated from architecture school in Italy. Bowled over by how modern New York was compared to their hometown in Naples, the duo moved to Manhattan for a postgraduate fellowship at Columbia University in 1990. Three years later, they set up LOT-EK to pursue their fascination with the city’s industrial landscape, which has defined their design vocabulary ever since.

Fire escapes, airplane fuselages, steel ducts and other detritus of the industrialized society are examples of the “Roman aqueduct now seen in the making,” says Lignano, proof of how we live today when archaeologists dig up the ground in 2,000 years time. But rather than leave them to waste till then, he sees the perfect building blocks for design.

“As a civilization, we would feel much less guilty if we had the ability of looking at what we make with enthusiasm and say we could do this with this, instead of just freaking out that we are accumulating millions of containers,” he says. “I think it would be a great thing, a really beautiful thing not only in architecture.”

This palpable love for human creativity — measured by his distinct left eyebrow that arches upwards whenever the grey bearded Lignano speaks excitedly — can be traced back to when he decided to become an architect. Barely ten years old, he had visited his uncle’s newly renovated apartment, and was blown away by how the architect had transformed the space. Uncle Franco became a huge inspiration in Lignano’s pursuit of wild and imaginative designs, which went so far that even the mentor said his nephew’s works were “completely crazy” and unacceptable to the world.

From turning an airplane container cargo into a personal workstation and using a cement mixer as a cocoon for watching television and playing video games, LOT-EK has gone from designing such installations for art galleries and museums to building architecture, most notably with the shipping container. The studio has converted them into mobile retail stores for PUMA and Uniqlo and will be inserting into New York’s Pier 57 some four-levels of containers filled with — not goods, but — a market, restaurants, and studios for artisan businesses that will turn the former shipping hub into a cultural and civic center.

More recently, LOT-EK has also gone beyond repurposing the shipping container to building with them. Lining one side of its container-like second-floor studio along Chrystie Street are various architecture models that are as arresting as the neon yellow and grey interiors. What looks like New York’s winding Guggenheim museum turned on its side is a proposal for a public library design consisting of 170 containers sliced, carved and stacked to create seven wheel-like structures joined together. Another model resembling a floating spaceship is actually an art school built in South Korea where LOT-EK sheared eight containers along a 45-degree angle, assembled them in a fishbone pattern, and elevated the entire structure.

These works are more than just futuristic-looking. Lignano takes down each model to explain how LOT-EK is “creating space by removal,” working like “skillful butchers” to cut open rectangular containers to different shapes, and combining them to make out-of-the-box buildings and spaces. This radical approach has gained LOT-EK media attention and helped it win prizes, including being a finalist for the National Design Awards in 2008. But up till today, the studio still struggles to get clients.

“A lot of people that have started much later than us have completely gone so much more than we have from a business point of view,” says Lignano. “The hardest part has been the fact that there is a lot of people they call because they think this is a very cheap way of building. So in a way they call for the wrong reasons. Because we don’t do this because it is cheap, we do this because it is smart for what it is.”

But beyond an ecologically smart way of design, or what it now markets as “upcycling,” Lignano believes in his approach because of how creative it is. It is what has kept him going for so long despite the lack of major commercial success until recently. This belief has helped LOT-EK grow from just Tolla and him working by day and waiting tables at night, to a team of 15 now serving clients in the US, Holland, Japan and China.

In that twenty years, New York city has also grown up as polished skyscrapers now overshadow its once chaotic industrial landscape. Even as his sources of inspiration are cleaned up, Lignano sees opportunities for LOT-EK’s works which has “more grit, more personality,” unlike the “boring” New York architecture scene which he likens to Wall Street.

In this sense, Lignano is no outsider. LOT-EK’s diverse, layered and a little rough around the edges architecture is exactly what New York city is — once you’re on the inside.

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Written for Adam Levy’s Art of the Interview class at D-Crit.