How do you design a country? Singapore Design Week 2025 looks back at the state's transformation over 60 years

Singapore Design Week returns (11-21 Septemer 2025) with an ambitious mission: to showcase how intentional design has shaped a nation. This year's festival carries the theme ‘Nation by Design’, marking six decades since Singapore's independence in 1965 with a celebration that positions design as the invisible architect of the city-state's remarkable transformation.

Tony Chambers, former editor-in-chief of Wallpaper* and co-curator of one of the festival’s lynchpin event Future Impact – a touring exhibition that showcases Singaporean design talent internationally – has witnessed Singapore's design evolution firsthand. 'Having been actively involved in the Singaporean design scene since 2017, I've witnessed a huge shift in confidence in home-grown talent,' he says. ‘The design acumen has always been there, but previously there was a tendency to put more trust in outside influences. Singapore Design Week has been instrumental in changing this dynamic.’

As Jody Teo, Festival Director and Director of Marketing Communications and Outreach at the DesignSingapore Council which organises the event points out, ‘Imagination and intentional design have been fundamental building blocks of Singapore's progress in the last 60 years’, emphasising the country's role as a UNESCO Creative City of Design in bridging East and West.

On even the most cursory glance at the programme, it’s clear that this edition of one of Asia's most significant design festivals promises to be its most reflective yet.

This confidence is evident in the festival's expanded scope. Bras Basah.Bugis, Marina, Orchard, and the newly added Singapore Science Park will each interpret the ‘Nation by Design’ theme through their unique lenses. The Science Park debut is particularly significant, transforming the precinct into a living laboratory where global innovators like DENSO and KONE collaborate with local creative partners to explore design thinking's role in urban planning and sustainability.

The week’s cornerstone events – Design Futures, Emerge, and Future Impact – anchor an ambitious programme. The first tackles ‘Braving Complexities’; the second expands beyond Southeast Asia to include creators from across the wider Asian region; whilst Future Impact arrives at the National Museum of Singapore after its successful Milan Design Week debut.

At the National Design Centre, co-founder and creative director of Kinetic Singapore, Pann Lim's Unnatural History Museum of Singapore offers a tongue-in-cheek exploration of the nation's improbable rise. ‘This commission gives us the chance to reflect not just on what Singapore has built, but how we've built it through design, without the luxury of natural resources,’ he explains, adding that visitors will encounter a six-metre faux fossil of the Merlion and cyborg cockroaches developed in collaboration with local universities and technology agencies.

With such a gold-plated roster of designers and curators assembled, expectations are running high that this edition of Singapore Design Week will match the impact of last year's festival. Chambers is effusive about that previous outing, in particular applauding ‘Atelier HOKO's immersive showcase READ:BOOK?, Forest & Whale's exploration of insomnia with SLEEP:LESS and Hans Tan's deeply moving HEAL:REPAIR+ which made for one of the most memorable and thought-provoking design weeks I have ever seen – anywhere in the world.'

If nothing else, this year's programme is both celebration and blueprint, demonstrating how design continues to be the driving force behind the nation's evolution. For Lim, the festival's deeper ambition ‘has never been just about aesthetics. Just as we've done in the past, we hope it inspires all to shape the future with creativity, innovation and intent.'

Beyond the marquee exhibitions and installations, the festival will also showcase an impressive array of cutting-edge work by designers across Asia. From innovative materials derived from coffee waste to solar cookers inspired by traditional cookware, here's a preview of what to look out for when the festival opens its doors.

Highlights from Singapore Design Week 2025

Espresso Chair by Banda

Ten million tonnes of Indonesian coffee waste had local designer Cokorda G. B. Suryanata of local studio Banda thinking differently. Working with Bell Living Lab, he’s developed C-Foam, a cork-like material born from espresso puck compression techniques. The result seats you in recycled coffee husks. This flat-packable, stackable chair features modular components and a stainless steel structure, plus a clever backrest hook for bags.

Ott: A Living Tradition by Yoon Seok-hyeon

South Korean designer Yoon Seok-hyeon spotted a problem: ceramic glazes prevent pottery from being properly recycled. His solution was to ditch the glaze entirely. Instead, he coats fired clay with ott, a natural resin tapped from lacquer trees across East Asia. The finished product melds ancient wisdom with modern sustainability as traditional lacquer techniques are reimagined on wood, textiles, and design objects through painting and dyeing methods to create practical and sustainable, yet beautiful, alternatives to conventional ceramic finishes.

Scaffold Chair by Studio Ryte

As Hong Kong’s construction industry continues to phase out the intricately woven bamboo scaffolding that are so emblematic of the city, yet another traditional craft begins to fade into memory. Studio Ryte stubbornly clings to this vanishing heritage through its ‘Scaffold’ series. Self-clamping mechanisms harness bamboo's natural flex. Pieces lock through rotation alone, with no synthetic fasteners needed. Built from responsibly sourced bamboo and reclaimed scaffolding materials, the resulting modular benches, shelves, and sculptural lights invite users to climb, arrange, and interact just as Hong Kong’s urban scaffolders once did.

Fold - Gold Reimagined by Tan Wei Ming

Malaysia cranks out 74 billion rubber gloves annually, and designer Tan Wei Ming spotted both figurative gold and potential in the inevitable rejects. Working with Big Hand Creation, she has transformed defective gloves into an elegant series of lamps that celebrate rubber's flexible properties while exploring new forms and applications, proving that one industry's trash can become another's treasure through clever design intervention. The project hopes to inspire other fabricators toward sustainable innovation across industries.

Matahari by Olivia Lee

Olivia Lee looked at Singapore's 1,500 kWh/m² annual solar irradiance and saw design potential in futuristic form. Her Matahari culinary set merges terracotta with metal deflectors to create a striking tiered solar cooker that channels Southeast Asian cookware vernacular. From every angle, it’s off-grid cooking meets meditation on humanity's sunny relationship with our nearest star. Lee's design bridges historical aesthetics with contemporary sustainability, proving the sun's infinite abundance was always within reach through analog technology.

Kintsugi 2.0 by Supermama

Design studio Supermama took Japan's golden crack-repair art and asked: what about missing pieces? Their Kintsugi 2.0 uses gold-plated 3D-printed resin to reconstruct, not just repair. Algorithmic growth patterns and digital textures replace lost ceramic fragments, while skeletal lattice structures hold everything together. Their restored ONE Singapore 2024 plate and generative batik-patterned vase show how traditional craftsmanship and cutting-edge technology make beautiful breaks, and even better comebacks. www.supermamastore.com

Singapore Design Week 2025 runs from 11-21 September 2025 at various locations across the island