EDITOR’S LETTER
In 2011, Wallpaper* flew into Singapore for a longoverdue and in-depth look at the country’s burgeoning creative scene. As we documented in the subsequent
Singapore Revealed (W*146) we found plenty to admire – in particular, the young cohort of designers, chefs and architects who were building on the pioneering works of the previous generation, and who were pushing into new frontiers of space, taste and silhouette.
Six years on, it seemed timely to call in once more on Singapore for a fresh look at how this island-state has held up in the face of many global challenges. We discovered that no one has been resting on their laurels. Singapore Art Week (January), Singapore Design Week (March) and the Singapore Biennale (October-february) are now key events on the calendar. The island’s creatives, meanwhile, are incorporating issues of ecology, eldercare, education and public housing into their work. They are even breaking new ground in construction techniques. Most intriguingly, from coast to coast, the buzzword we kept coming up against was ‘innovation’ – not for its own sake, but rather in terms of business and design. One feeds the other, but it’s impossible to unravel what drives what.
Channelling our customary zeitgeist, earlier this year Wallpaper* partnered with Designsingapore Council, the country’s national agency for design, to stage the inaugural Wallpaper* Handmade Classics
exhibition, a showcase of original, one-off pieces and design collaborations commissioned by us and created by international talents. That collection was recently refreshed with new pieces shipped in straight from this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan.
If it’s not already clear, these are interesting times. And if it often seems that we’re all just lurching from one crisis to another, it’s even more important to remember the role that good design and architecture can play in ordering chaos, in synthesising conflicting business and societal demands, in creating beauty, or even in raising the spirits. Remarkably for a country that’s barely 700 sq km, it looks as though Singapore is showing us all the way.