Category: History

Design50: The Humble Kopitiam Stool (1990s)

The Unica Plastic Stool | Pix: SINGAPLASTICS
The Unica Plastic Stool | Pix: SINGAPLASTICS

Most Singaporeans have sat on one before. Plastic stools support the bums of kopitiam goers around the city as they tuck into their wanton mee, nasi lemak or prata.

They come in all shades and shapes like the customers they serve, and one in particular is the design of Mr Chew Moh-Jin, a Singaporean industrial designer who unexpectedly created what is now an icon of Singapore’s food culture.

Picture a 30-centimetres wide circle bounded tightly by a square. Extend a third of the square to a height of 44-centimetres to create a leg. Repeat for the remaining three corners and you have an outline of the stool Mr Chew designed—a modern solution for a decades-old Singapore plastics manufacturer.

➜ Read the rest in SG50 Pulse

Design50: Space For A Nation to Play (1980s)

Mr Khor Ean Ghee standing atop the Dragon Playground he designed. | PIX: ZAKARIA ZAINAL
Mr Khor Ean Ghee standing atop the Dragon Playground he designed. | PIX: ZAKARIA ZAINAL

Dragons are everywhere in Singapore these days. As a pin, a door stopper and a toy rocker. On music album cover, a fashion spread and even an elections manifesto. This mythical animal has become a part of the Singapore story—and it all started with Mr Khor Ean Ghee.

Close to four decades ago, he dreamt up a playground shaped as this Asian symbol while working as an interior designer in the Housing and Development Board (HDB). Mr Khor had been tasked by the agency’s then head honcho Liu Thai Ker to design play spaces for a new generation of public housing that would go beyond providing just a roof over Singaporeans heads.

“The thinking then was to have more local identity and themes. We wanted something different, designs that reflect what we see in Singapore,” recalls the designer who joined HDB in 1969.

➜ Read the rest in SG50 Pulse

How One Woman’s Search for Malaysia’s Design History Became a National Archive

The Malaysia Design Archive actually began in Havana, Cuba. In 2007, founder Ezrena Marwan visited the city for the Icograda World Design Congress, where, as she listened to Cuban graphic designers share how they were limited to creating propaganda by their country’s politics, Ezrena was struck by how different it was from her own experience as a graphic designer back home.

“We only design for commercial stuff, and we don’t really pay attention to anything else,” she says. “I was really inspired by how much they think about design, and how much it’s linked to politics and the land.”

She started collecting and documenting everyday graphics in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and shared them online. That marked the beginning of the Malaysia Design Archive, a website that traces the history of this Southeast Asian nation through its visual culture.

➜ Read the rest at AIGA’s Eye on Design