Home-grown design talent showcase innovative Singapore designs at Future Impact 2 in Milan.
Ms Tiffany Loy's Mosaic Membrane, Christian+Jade's Para Stool, Mr Gabriel Tan's Good Gourd – Hybrid Basketry Lamps and Mr Zavier Wong’s Manifold Steel – Wall Piece No. 1 are some of the pieces by Singaporean designers showing at Milan Design Week's Future Impact 2.
DSG, a subsidiary of the Economic Development Board and Singapore’s national agency for design, is staging its second standalone exhibition of Singapore designs at the La Rotonda del Pellegrini. It is a Renaissance-era building in the heart of Milan, outside the 62nd Salone del Mobile.Milano, which is at the Rho Fiera fairgrounds.
Every year, about 370,000 attendees from 188 countries use the global platform to introduce thousands of innovative products. Mr Tony Chambers, a global design thought leader, and Ms Maria Cristina Didero, a Milan-based author and design curator, helped DSG put together the inaugural iteration of Future Impact in 2023. They returned as curators in 2024 and worked with designers to present positive and impactful design solutions for a better future.
“The council continues to identify relevant industry platforms as part of our ongoing efforts to engage global audiences and raise the profile of Singapore Design internationally.”Good Gourd – Hybrid Basketry Lamps by Gabriel Tan In 2023, he exhibited a floor and pendant lamp inspired by the Flower Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
“We collaborated with her in the weaving of these lamps,” says Mr Tan. “The forms of the lamps are inspired by the strange but beautiful shapes of gourds and squashes, while their structures pay homage to the Akari lanterns by Isamu Noguchi.” Conversely, 3D-printing offers precision and efficiency, but is limited to an output pre-determined by the computer model.
“In collaboration with Friul Mosaic, we’ll be exhibiting a coffee table made from mosaic pieces that are from offcut stones,” says Ms Loy, 37, who graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a master’s in textiles, specialising in weaving. She also studied textile-weaving in Kyoto. Her designs examine the relationships between material, people and culture, hoping to spark dialogue about new technologies for the future.
Unlikely Fragments is her way of demonstrating how excess materials can be repurposed to function sustainably as well as look beautiful. The high-tech formulation, which was developed by Singapore-based start-up Xinterra, absorbs carbon dioxide using artificial intelligence technology. She sent some pieces of vintage silk to Xinterra’s laboratory in Singapore for processing while working on the wood and metal components with her network of craft artisans in Indonesia.
He says this is a form of artistic discipline and a constant reminder that “the essence of creation transcends individual identity”. He infuses this ethos in his works to stress that art emerges not just from an individual, but also from collective input. “This led me to design sculptural furniture, focusing on self-reliance in production,” says Mr Lee, 54, whose designs include pop art, minimalist furniture and home decor accents.
“Despite its outward appearance of simplicity, the end-products of furniture today demand significant investments of time, labour and resources,” says Mr Lee. Design duo Christian Hammer Juhl and Jade Chan of Christian+Jade have come up with a stool made from old rubber trees destined for the incinerator after their 30-year lifespan.
The Copenhagen-based practice was founded in 2020, centred on the desire to create works that challenge and deepen the relationship that people have with objects and spaces, as a way of shifting attitudes towards how humans live and consume.The Para rubber tree, native to the Amazon region, was first introduced to Singapore in 1876 by the director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens H.N. Ridley.
Mr Juhl, 33, says more people need to start seeing the materials and objects in the everyday environment as natural resources harvested from the earth. The ceramic pieces are coated in glaze formulated with glass waste and enhanced with thermochromic paint that changes colour when the surface is activated. It is heated with circuits embedded into the ceramic body that are triggered when touched.
The idea for Reciproco came to Ms Ang as she felt the comforting warmth from a ceramic mug she was holding while reading papers from the Interactive Materials Lab, a research outfit in the National University of Singapore’s Division of Industrial Design.
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