Penang Road’s skyline has grown a great deal taller since 1885, when Teochew merchant Tan Yeok Nee built what is now the sole survivor of Singapore’s four grand mansions as his private residence. The house went on to serve as a British railway official’s home, then St Mary’s Home and School for Eurasian Girls, then a traditional Chinese medicine clinic – a sequence of occupants that Bar Kap, the new cocktail bar occupying the manse’s ground floor, has turned its entire drinks menu around. The rest of the house has been given new life too, with a restaurant, offices and exhibition space elsewhere on the grounds.

The mood: Heritage restored, reimagined room by room

DP Architects’ restoration of the grand pile keeps the antique timber beams and carved details of the main hall intact, while local design studio Farm adds mirrored surfaces that expand the hall’s sense of scale. A Y-shaped bar console anchors the space, built for watching the pours up close. Two private rooms sit off the hall: the Carriage Room, dressed in fabric and painted brass to suggest a train compartment, and the Chamber, styled after a Chinese medicine apothecary and fitted out to display the bar’s clay-ageing vessels.

The drinks: six cocktails, six eras, one shared history

The menu, developed with Studio Ryecroft, tracks the building’s eras through six cocktails apiece. The Pepper Peddler mixes baijiu, gin and makgeolli into a peppery, chocolate-tinged highball honouring Tan Yeok Nee’s spice trade, whilst the Dynamo, aged in purple clay using an 8,000-year-old technique, layers Irish whiskey, amaro and dark soy into something dense and savoury. The food menu runs a similar arc, from a salmon roe and yuzu granita through Mee Kapitan – a mala-spiked house noodle with pork and shrimp paste – to a rendang-stuffed Bar Kap Bao. After all its previous lives, this house has finally found one worth staying up late for.

Bar Kap is located at 101 Penang Rd, House of Tan Yeok Nee, Singapore 238466

Eight years after closing Restaurant André in 2018 at what he called ‘a moment of perfection’, the Taiwanese chef André Chiang is back in Singapore. He has chosen to return inside one of Asia’s most mythic addresses: the former Raffles Grill at Raffles Singapore, a high-ceilinged room that has hosted coronation dinners and colonial galas since 1887. That year – the hotel’s founding – gives the 42-seat restaurant its name, and its culinary conceit: a menu that moves through time rather than through courses.

Wallpaper* dines at 1887 by André

The mood: whimsical grandeur

Inspired by the idea of a leafy, tropical conservatory, the Bangkok-based interior designer Bill Bensley has kept the room's colonial bones – arched colonnades, original herringbone parquet – while imprinting his trademark extravagance into every surface. Towering metal-foiled Traveller's Palms rise toward a trompe-l’oeil glass ceiling complete with powder blue sky and wispy white clouds hand-painted by Bensley, whilst mechanised punkah fans, their blades cut in the shape of great green hearts, flap slowly overhead.

A curved glass cabinet at the entrance displays the hotel's silverware collection, including antique pieces buried in the hotel grounds during the Japanese occupation and unearthed after the war; and at the far end, a raised semicircular bar – its stools monogrammed, its marble top deep enough to dine at – accommodates walk-ins and solo diners. The room is unapologetically theatrical, and no one minds at all.

The food: time, unravelled

Chiang spent over a year in Raffles Singapore’s archives, rifling and leafing through sepia menus from the hotel’s past. What he found was quietly startling, not least wild rose ice cream, turtle soup as a Victorian luxury, and Duck Apicius roasted with ancient Roman spice. The result of all this gastro forensics is a menu that Chiang has conceived as a time machine in which each course represents a different era, and each table, depending on what is ordered, sits in a different year on the 1887-to-present continuum.

In practice, this means an intriguing trawl through nearly 60 dishes – Victorian, Singaporean and Chiang's personal signatures all present simultaneously – that dismantles the conventional tasting sequence entirely. For those who prefer a guide, three formulas named after French cultural figures – Monet, Eiffel, and Bernhardt – offer a curated path through the labyrinth.

But the invitation to roam freely is the point. A preview tasting yielded Légumes en Vessie Sarah Bernhardt – vegetables cooked inside a pig's bladder using a Belle Époque technique all but vanished from contemporary kitchens – alongside a more contemporary East-meets-West Blanquette de Bak Kut Teh and a Green Curry King Oyster Mushroom that needed, besides sheer culinary chutzpah, no historical justification at all. ‘You can stop anywhere you want,’ Chiang says. ‘Mix and match. Decide which time period you want to go to.’

Unlike his previous restaurants, which he tends to close just at the height of their fame and move on, 1887 by André is conceived as something more permanent – a place, he says, that generations of diners can keep coming back to.

Appropriately, the kitchen is helmed day-to-day by Ben Wang and Roy Kuo, both trained and seasoned by Chiang at RAW in Taipei, a restaurant he ran, he says, as ‘a gallery, a museum, an exhibition hall’ whilst staging seasons of grand classic French cooking and VR dinners before closing it at the end of 2024. A culinary academy will open in its place later this year.

For a chef who returned his stars, closed his restaurants at their peaks and built a cooking school, 1887 by André feels less like a comeback story (which, of course, it is) than an act of custodianship – for a city, and a culinary culture, he has never really stopped calling home.

1887 by André is at Raffles Singapore, 1 Beach Road, Singapore 189673

Singapore doesn’t do anything by halves, not least its built environment. Its skyline – a bristling congregation of glass and steel towers – is one of the most recognisable in Asia, built at a pace that reflects a city-state in perpetual rush. For much of its modern architectural history, the default mode was the hermetically sealed curtain wall: tinted, reflective, climate-controlled from within. Nature, if it featured at all, was confined to a lobby atrium or a rooftop amenity deck.

Explore this Singapore tower with a vertical garden

That began to change with the work of local studios such as WOHA, whose porous, vegetation-draped towers championed a fundamentally different model – architecture that breathes rather than seals. Thomas Heatherwick’s Eden, completed in 2019, pushed the argument further, wrapping each of its 20 apartments in cascading planted balconies, proposing greenery as structure rather than ornament. Developers have taken note and Singapore’s Green Mark certification framework has steadily raised expectations.

Park Nova, the first South-East Asian project by London-based PLP Architecture is the latest – and perhaps most arresting – entry in this conversation. Commissioned by Hong Kong and Macau developers Shun Tak Holdings after several conventional schemes for the Orchard Boulevard site had failed to satisfy, PLP was approached for something more distinctive. ‘There was immediate alignment from the moment the narrative was shared,’ says Tina Qiu, partner at PLP and project lead, ‘and the project evolved with an unusual degree of continuity from that moment.’

The building’s 21 storeys hold 54 residences, each extending into a deep, planted private terrace. Inspired by the site’s history as a nutmeg orchard and the butterflies it once attracted, the undulating floor-plates shift orientation from floor to floor, producing a silhouette that changes from every angle and ensures no two apartments are identical. The form is purposeful: projecting balconies, between half a metre and nearly three metres, reduce solar radiation by approximately 70 per cent, allowing for completely clear glazing throughout. ‘Colours remain true, skies are accurately perceived, and subtle changes in light and weather are felt throughout the day,’ Qiu notes.

Securing approval for these varying balcony depths – a first for residential construction in Singapore at this scale – required complex dialogues with planning authorities, with the team wielding environmental, experiential and maintenance credentials in spades. The 35 plant species were grown off-site and tested before installation; ongoing maintenance is handled by gondolas that move around the façade on a programmed timetable.

For Qiu, what distinguishes Park Nova from its biophilic predecessors is the insistence that greenery is woven into the fabric of domestic life itself. ‘It sits directly alongside living and sleeping spaces, fundamentally reshaping what high-rise living can feel like.’ In Singapore, a city that has always treated ambition as infrastructure, that feels like the next logical step.

plparchitecture.com

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Since its hoardings came down in 1929, The Quadrant at 19 Cecil Street has been home to several Chinese banks, and the evidence is still down in the basement. Here, the original bank vault has been reimagined as a soigné, mood-lit private dining and tasting room, its walls lined with staves – the individual curved planks from retired Suntory distillery barrels still carrying a faint whiff of aged oak. It sets the tone for what awaits upstairs: Barrel Story of Hibiki, a joint venture between The House of Suntory and chef Sho Naganuma of cult-favourite Torasho Ramen & Charcoal Bar in nearby Tanjong Pagar.

Wallpaper* dines at Barrel Story of Hibiki, Singapore

The mood: wood, fire and a bank vault

The building’s gently curved Art Deco facade was designed by Keys and Dowdeswell, the British firm responsible for much of what still stands in this part of Singapore's CBD, including the Fullerton Hotel, a few blocks away at the mouth of the river. The interiors are a case study of how the past of a heritage space can be put to genuinely elegant use. Tokyo designer Junpei Yamagiwa of Designpost has anchored the main dining room around a 10-seat counter wrapping the central wood-fire grill, with dark timber and textured stone keeping the mood focused.

The double-height ceiling – a genuine rarity in Singapore restaurants – gives the room a sense of occasion that the rest of the design works carefully not to oversell. Hibiki, Suntory's premium blended whisky whose name translates as ‘resonance', provides the conceptual framework, which the restaurant lists as fire, patience, and natural harmony. These are not just marketing words here. They show up in the Jenga-block-pattern ceiling, the barrel-wood fuel stacked behind the pass, and the ceramic plate-ware, which is delicate and detailed enough to warrant a second look every time a dish arrives.

The food: izakaya, upgraded

Naganuma's menu is built for drinking alongside, and it segues well. The archly-named Uni-corn Croquette – crisp potato shell, creamed white corn, sea urchin – pits sweetness against brine and lets both win. A potato salad topped with cured egg yolk lands somewhere between a side dish and a vegetarian steak tartare. The seafood donabe is the dish to order: every grain of rice arrives glossed and smoky, broken up by the sudden saline punctuation of tobiko and bijoux cuts of squid and prawns. The wood fire earns its keep in the cooking rather than the air – you taste it in the opening bowl of smoked nuts, in the grilled XL tiger prawns, and most memorably in the off-menu fish collar, which can, depending on season and availability, include marlin and tuna, and should be requested when you book.

Currently the only Singapore venue pouring Hibiki by the glass, Barrel holds one of the more serious Suntory collections in Asia. The entry flight (S$38) presents Japanese Harmony three ways – highball, rocks, mizuwari – and it’s less a tasting exercise than a demonstration of how radically the same whisky shifts character depending on how it meets water. The cocktail list has its own tricks: the Hibiki Champagne Style Highball arrives without ice, its bubbles doing the work without the stress of melting dilution, while the Hibiki Sling cheerfully faces off against Singapore's most iconic drink and more or less wins. The Barrel flight reaches vintages up to 30 years old, though at S$988, we suggest you come armed with a fully charged Amex.

Barrel Story of Hibiki is located at 19 Cecil St, #01-01 The Quadrant, Singapore 049704

Uno Jang, the creative force behind Singapore’s cocktail-bar specialist the Jigger & Pony Group, has turned a fin de siècle Tras Street shophouse in the city’s Chinatown into a new bar, BOP – Bartenders of Pony. On every metric, it is the Korean-born bartender’s most personal venture yet. The name works three ways: Bartenders of Pony is a nod to the team behind it; the acronym is close to ‘bap’, the Korean word for rice; and it’s also a wink at Jang's obsession with K-pop.

Jang’s buddy, the consultant chef Jason Oh (who has featured in Netflix’s Culinary Class Wars), has shaped a pint-sized yet muscular menu that powers through the evening at speed, while Jang’s cocktails prove far stronger than their bright, approachable flavours suggest. Tables occupy every possible nook, including tight corners between columns, the preppy varsity-jacketed staff stepping nimbly through the crowds that pack in at the weekends to snack and groove to 1980s and 1990s vinyls.

Wallpaper* dines at Bartenders of Pony, Singapore

The mood: youthful energy

Gabriel Tan (shortlisted for a Wallpaper* Design Award 2026) of local design studio Antimatter worked Korea’s traditional obangsaek colour palette – white, black, blue, red, yellow, representing the five elements and cardinal directions that run through Korean culture – into three distinct zones without falling into literal reproduction.

At the front of the Kki Bar, where Jang often holds court, dark timber meets a red ceiling. Further in, the Skylight Green section opens up with verdant floor tiles and ochre accents. The rear lounge wraps diners in crimson sofas framed by modern interpretations of jogakbo – traditional patchwork wrapping cloths – now reimagined as a door curtain. Mood lighting keeps everything intimate, and the obangsaek palette, when layered across surfaces, shifts into unexpected secondary tones that lend the spaces a luxe, sexy mood.

The food: generous, fast, inventive and delicious

Jason Oh’s influence delivers hefty portion sizes and flavour in equal measure. Perilla oil noodles arrive blanketed in crisp seaweed shards and sesame, hitting pure umami. The muchim salad balances tender squid, shatteringly crunchy cucumber and radish beneath basil leaves, with real chilli bite and satisfying more-ishness. Tuna gimbap presents as neat discs of California rolls stuffed with crab and daikon, and topped with thick, sweet tuna slabs.

Fried chicken pieces snuggle in a dainty basket, their golden crust adding an addictive, unctuous crunch. Pair it all with Iced Somaek – draft beer crowned with shaved soju ice that is dangerously easy to drink despite its potency. The Perilla Smash, built on Korean mint sharpened with gin, lemon, perilla oil and vinegar, shows Jang’s touch for brightness tempered by complexity. A single dessert closes things, and it’s a triumph: banana milk tiramisu, thick and fragrant, delivering creamy comfort with just enough cheek for the road.

Bartenders of Pony is located at located at 76 Tras Street, Singapore 079015

Ten years after it first opened, Odette has emerged from a seasonal closure with a complete aesthetic rethink. Chef Julien Royer has reunited with Sacha Leong – who designed the original space while he was at Universal Design Studio – to reimagine the restaurant housed within the National Gallery’s former Supreme Court building. Leong, now co-principal of Nice Projects (the London and Sydney studio he founded with Simone McEwan), has moved the interiors away from the original’s pastel softness toward warmer tones, creamy neutrals and amber tones that are played against timber in shades of pale grey-beige and cherry.

Wallpaper* dines at Odette, Singapore

The mood: quietly luxe

The original silhouette of curved screens remains, now reimagined in intricate timber marquetry that recalls art deco cabinetry and echoes the building’s 1930s architecture. A new faux skylight crowns the dining room with diffused overhead illumination. Glass and brass table bases add a contemporary edge, and even the tablecloths have been cropped shorter for a less formal effect. Mohair velvet armchairs embrace diners as snugly as the custom banquettes. At the entrance, multidisciplinary artist Dawn Ng’s suspended paper sculptures – their hues drawn from Royer’s seasonal ingredients – establish the mood; two additional works by Ng animate the private dining room.

Materials have grown more tactile. Cast mirrored glass panels create soft reflections along the walls, and Michael Anastassiades brass pendants drop above each table, whilst a central marble-topped wine station anchors the room. In other words, everything feels assured and grown up in a dining room swathed in craftsmanship.

The food: evolved restraint

The spatial evolution mirrors shifts in Royer’s cooking. His menu still celebrates European provenance – John Vallance’s Scottish seafood, Les Moulins d’Antoine’s Auvergne flour, Tartufi Mora’s Alba truffles – but, like the decor, the mood is lighter and fresher. Bafun uni arrives atop brown-butter-brushed French toast, while emulsions riff cheekily on Singaporean chilli crab. The vegetarian menu offers edible spring gardens topped with radish ice cream, with the star billing seized by an onion millefeuille, its rings taken apart, layered with truffle and then reassembled, and finished with yellow wine jus from the Jura. Classic signatures like the Kampot pepper-crusted pigeon remain, but the overall effect feels less rigid, more evolved.

And the service? It’s still impeccably polished and unhurried, the senior French staff orchestrating deftly paced lunches that routinely stretch to four hours without ever feeling interminable. It’s a confident maturation for a restaurant that no longer needs to prove anything, choosing, instead, to deepen what it has been doing exceptionally well for a decade.

Odette is located at 1 St Andrew's Rd, #01-04 National Gallery, Singapore 178957

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 alongside Maria Cristina Didero 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

Singapore’s heaving hotel scene just got more crowded with the debut of Raffles Sentosa Singapore, the city-state’s first all-villa resort, pipping the post on the October 2025 opening of the Loris. Billionaire Asok Kumar Hiranandani’s Royal Group has backed this 62-villa retreat while simultaneously investing £110m in its first London hotel – the former NatWest building on Piccadilly in Mayfair, due in late 2026. Investment figures for Raffles Sentosa remain officially undisclosed, though whispers start at around £41m. The bet? That luxury travellers will trade the colonial grandeur of the original Raffles Singapore in town for jungle chic and island zen. The gamble looks like it’s paying off. Occupancy rates are high, even with entry-level villas starting at around £800 nightly, while locals are booking staycations with fiscal abandon.

Wallpaper* checks in at Raffles Sentosa Singapore

What’s on your doorstep?

Forget postcard ocean views – Raffles Sentosa takes the high road, literally. Perched on a hill festooned with crêpe ginger shrubs, elephant ear fronds, frangipani, ficus and kapok trees, the resort swaps sea vistas for forest intimacy and a light jungle soundtrack of cicadas and peacock cries. It’s a bold move that creates a 100,000 sq m hideaway that’s more Bali-esque than your typical Singapore waterfront fare. The elevated position also means natural privacy barriers courtesy of Sentosa’s canopy, with Tanjong Beach and the golf club within easy reach. Proving once again that, sometimes, the best view is the one you don’t expect.

Who is behind the design?

North American studio Yabu Pushelberg transforms the sometimes starchy Raffles formality into something more relaxed. ‘The client envisioned a resort that would carry the Raffles legacy forward,’ says Glenn Pushelberg. ‘We approached Raffles Singapore as the matriarch, positioning the Sentosa property as her contemporary granddaughter on holiday.’ Which explains the dark floral-bloomed prints, relaxed pale-green linen couches, tall mirrored wardrobes, and oak-panelled ceilings. Travertine tile flows from outdoor pool decks into interiors, while natural materials like rattan and linen complement bold tropical patterns. Equally pleasing are copper accents that catch light, from bedside water jugs and drinking vessels to flower pots.

The room to book

The 515 sq m Presidential Villa steals the show with its three-pavilion set-up wrapped around a private square pool. This, says Pushelberg, is his favourite space. ‘It feels like a private resort within the resort. We love the serene and secluded atmosphere.’ For full tycoon extravagance, though, the 650 sq m Royal Villa delivers four bedrooms and a sprawling living room – ideal for blow-out parties for your entourage. Every villa gets its own butler, ready to unpack your chaos and arrange an island tour in one of the resort’s two Rolls-Royce Phantoms and fix everything else – from poolside cocktails, and late evening baths scented with lavender and vanilla bean oil to midnight snack attacks.

Mini bar highlights?

Skip the predictable Delamotte champagne and salted egg yolk crisps for something more interesting. Such as bespoke dark rum scented with Malaysian molasses and French oak, Rojak gin infused with ginger flower and lemon peel, and a killer Straits Vodka spiked with wildflower honey, nutmeg and cinnamon. In other words, local flavours that actually taste like somewhere specific. If a DIY post-prandial tipple is too much effort, decamp to the soigné Chairman’s Room for a £317 shot of 30-year-old Macallan Sherry Oak.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

The resort conspires to keep ravenous guests on-property with at least seven food and beverage options. Empire Grill highlights Tuscan fare, the mood best experienced at twilight when poolside dining turns full Somerset Maugham fantasy. Royal China – no relation to the London namesake – serves a mix of classic and light fusion-Cantonese standards, while Iyasaka by Hashida squeezes omakase intimacy into 12 precious seats. The real gem is, perhaps, the aforementioned Chairman’s Room, a bijou cocoon hidden behind the reception area like a proper speakeasy serving up rare whiskies and the Sentosa Sling – the original Singapore Sling’s eco-conscious cousin made with upcycled watermelon skins and resort-grown lemon leaves.

Where to switch off

The wellness facility, formerly the Sofitel spa, occupies a restored 1930s military barracks. Completely remodelled after the Raffles takeover, the spa now features 13 treatment rooms spread across a rambling bungalow, backed by a 22m lap pool, steam rooms, and an outdoor whirlpool complete with decorative rock waterfall and mud pool. It’s adaptive reuse done right, with colonial history meeting millennial wellness regime without losing either story.

The service

Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither is flawless service. At the new Raffles, the staff’s enthusiasm runs high, though the resort’s recent (March 2025) opening date occasionally shows through small gaps in execution. The younger crew brings genuine eagerness that sometimes lacks veteran polish – think eager puppy rather than seasoned retriever. The heart’s absolutely there; muscle memory just needs time to develop.

The verdict

Raffles Sentosa Singapore succeeds by refusing to be its Beach Road sibling’s doppelgänger. Sure, some operational kinks need to be smoothed out, but the core appeal works, not least, spacious villas and personalised attention. It’s luxury hospitality recalibrated for travellers who prefer escapism with tropical vibes, privacy and nature over city buzz. The question isn’t whether the resort matches the original Raffles legacy, but whether it creates something worth returning to. Early signs suggest yes.

Raffles Sentosa Singapore is located at 4 Bukit Manis Rd, Sentosa, Singapore 099947.

A Singapore terrace redesign has become the owner's dream 'last home'. The project, titled My Last Home and created by dynamic emerging studio L Architects – a practice featured in our 2024 Wallpaper* Architects Directory – was the complete reimaginging of an existing mid-terrace residence created three decades ago as part of a larger development. Practice founder Lim Shing Hui and her team fully rethought the home into a contemporary interior, brimming with texture, rawness and atmosphere.

Discover L Architects’ Singapore terrace redesign ‘My last home’

Lim worked closely with team members Loo Quan Le and Tse Lee Shing to renovate the home, which is situated in the central region of Singapore, for her client, who was turning 67.

She writes: 'Age 67 is a significant age for Singaporeans. For most, it means retirement. My Last Home is a renovation project of an existing two-storey intermediate terrace house that was built 30 years ago. This house is for a retired professor who was returning to Singapore for his retirement and told the team that this will be his last home.'

The architect decided to craft a completely fresh take on the existing house's interior, which was covered in thick plaster and ceiling boards, hiding the structure's bones and 'spirit.' In an effort to go back to basics, Lim uncovered all surfaces as much as possible, going for a more utilitarian, exposed effect that tells an honest story of the building and its materiality.

One significant drawback the architect identified, as she examined the original design, was the lack of natural light on the ground level. To remedy this, she removed all partitions and existing walls inside, allowing the sunlight to reach deep into the floorplate. At the same time, the material surfaces are celebrated, layering texture, tactility and a pleasing play of shadows throughout.

The architect tells the story of the redesign process: 'We carried out more on-site investigations. Firstly, to remove a test portion of the thick plaster on the party walls we uncovered a very beautiful English bond brick tessellation behind it. We think it would be interesting to have all the old brick work revealed, pairing them against the newly erected walls using today’s available bricks to meaningfully reflect its time and history through this renovation.'

In keeping with this spirit, electrical and mechanical elements, such as aircon ducts, water and rainwater pipes, were also left exposed. This has the added benefit 'that they can be easily changed or repaired if needed,' the architect explains. Ceiling boards on the upper floor were also removed, allowing for the pitched roof structure and ceiling rafters to be visible, adding to the spatial drama of the bedroom.

'Most landed houses in Singapore, a fast-paced city, do not survive past the age of 30 before they get demolished. Literally and figuratively, we would like to uncover the beauty of these old houses by truly respecting their deserving value,' Lim concludes.

Tucked away in Singapore’s moneyed Bukit Timah neighbourhood, a distinctive concrete structure stands out from its surroundings. The area's semi-detached 1990s homes feature decorative façades and fussy embellishments, but architect Lim Koon Park has taken a different approach.

QR3D is Singapore's first wholly 3D-printed house, a 6,130-sq-ft, four-level, seven-bedroom home that doubles as an innovation showcase and family sanctuary. ‘We wanted to create something beyond a technological demonstration,’ says Lim, the founder of Park + Associates, whose work ranges from family compounds to resort developments. ‘Technology-driven architecture often produces either uniform efficiency or experimental forms that lack livability. We were after something more nuanced.'

Inside this remarkable Singapore 3D-printed concrete house

The two-year project emerged through collaboration with local 3D concrete printing specialist CES_InnovFab and arrived at a pivotal moment when Singapore’s construction industry faces labour shortages and spiralling costs post-pandemic. Lim’s longstanding interest in alternative construction methods and materials – particularly those that could be adopted by mainstream architecture – meant that he approached the design process like any other house with modifications for the printing process coming later.

Specifically, the construction was split between two approaches. Some walls emerged on-site, the printer sheltered from Singapore's tropical downpours as it deposited layer upon layer of concrete. Other elements took shape in factory conditions before being trucked to the site. Gone were the usual armies of workers setting timber formwork, laying endless bricks, plastering and painting.

For home's distinctive oculus – a conical void rising nearly six meters – the team had to innovate further. ‘We actually printed "bricks" for the slanted portions,’ Lim explains. ‘The angle presented a technical challenge – concrete typically wants to slump when printed at certain inclines. Rather than wait for specialized quick-drying mixes to become available, we adapted by printing smaller components that could be assembled.’

The learning curve was steep but rewarding. ‘This was our first time working with 3D printing technology,’ Lim says. ‘It required much more problem-solving and collaboration than conventional methods. We had to improvise even basic elements –like printing near party walls where the nozzle had limited access. But that's precisely what made it so satisfying – we were discovering solutions in real-time.’

Traditional construction methods involve endless specialists, Lim adds with the weariness of someone who's supervised too many conventional builds. The 3D process eliminated multiple trades for a single wall – no timber formwork for concreting, no bricks, and no unfinished walls. This approach reduced waste, labour costs, noise, construction traffic and dust – benefits that Lim believes could help drive wider adoption of the technology.

The temperature regulation is intuitive and responds to Singapore's tropical climate without complex systems. More than an architectural centrepiece, the oculus feature performs practical work, providing light while drawing hot air upward where it’s removed by a passive turbo extractor. This centrepiece carries emotional weight, too. ‘I'm drawn to the dining area beneath the Oculus,’ Lim says. ‘The light shifts constantly – dramatic during thunderstorms, contemplative at dusk, revealing something new with every meal.’

The home unfolds as a choreographed sequence, each space relating to the central void. Floor levels step and shift, creating compression and release. Ceiling heights dance from an intimate 9.5 ft on the indoor terrace to a liberating 16.5 ft where the family gathers. Glimpses of the oculus appear unexpectedly, orienting you within the concrete shell.

Materials tell a sustainability story without overstatement. Structural concrete works in tandem with the printed elements. Floors combine large-format tiles, recycled composites, and engineered timber. The powder room floor repurposes discarded marble fragments – offcuts sourced from a local stone supplier's waste bins.

Other environmental considerations shaped the design. The western façade functions as a party wall with the adjacent house, avoiding the harsh afternoon sun. Deep overhangs shade southeast-facing spaces, while limited fenestration reduces heat gain in bedrooms. A heat pump water heater releases cool air as a byproduct into top-floor spaces.

What's genuinely subversive is Lim's refusal to hide the technology. The striated surfaces – each layer of printed concrete visible like geological strata – remain deliberately exposed with no additional plastering or painting.

‘Architecture has become obsessed with perfectly polished finishes,’ he says, running a hand along the ridged wall. ‘We're celebrating the process itself. You can literally read how this house was made.’

Lim, whose architectural education spans Singapore (National University) and the UK (University of Sheffield and The Bartlett at UCL), sees QR3D as one step in a longer journey. With this project, he wanted to prove several points: that 3D printing could work for mainstream architectural projects in urban settings; that it could achieve high-quality, emotive spaces; and that despite novel technology, it could create a home that remains relevant for decades.

‘The technology exists now – what's needed is education, awareness, and R&D to gain momentum in mainstream architecture,’ says Lim whose practice continues pursuing unexpected directions, from multi-generational compounds in Singapore to an eco-retreat nestled in Fiji's aptly-named Sleeping Giant mountain and an entertainment complex in Saudi Arabia. With QR3D, he's crafted something distinctive: a technological advancement that feels reassuringly human – a concrete poem that celebrates both innovation and memory, expressed in the language of home.

parkassociates.com.sg

Contrast therapy, head-to-toe massage and neuroaesthetic interior design form the cornerstones of Hideaway’s holistic ethos. The Singapore-based spa opened up a new bathhouse space late last year (2024) containing infrared saunas by Clearlight and custom-built cold plunge tubs.

While the infrared technology penetrates deeper than conventional saunas to promote cellular repair and detoxification, the cold plunges (which can be set to a brave 4°C, moderate 8°C, or gentler 10°C) offer their own science-backed benefits, from reducing inflammation to boosting immunity. When used in conjunction, the shifts in temperature are said to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, said to improve sleep and reduce anxiety.

Contrast therapy meets neuroaesthetic design at the Hideaway spa and bathhouse in Singapore

These contrast therapies can be enjoyed solo or shared, with four semi-private pods accommodating singles or pairs. There is also a private suite hosting up to four guests. This flexibility speaks to both introverted wellness seekers looking for a solo moment of self-reflection and those who prefer to engage in the social side of bathhouse culture. Massages take place in one of eight mood-lit treatment rooms, provide a deeper therapeutic counterpoint to the thermal extremes, while the tea lounge offers a space for contemplative recovery.

The spa’s location inside New Bahru, a buzzy new lifestyle destination in the River Valley occupying what was once a mid-century high school, provides an intriguing architectural narrative. This is complemented by interior and spatial from local studio Parable, which also count the likes of Hermès among its roster of clients. Founding partner Ken Yuktasevi describes the vision for Hideaway as a ‘meditation on humane luxury’. Here, original glass blocks and handcrafted ceramics create an atmosphere that manages to feel both heritage-conscious and distinctly contemporary. Fabric screens diffuse natural light through the reception area, while terracotta textures and imperfect moulded surfaces add tactile warmth to the industrial bones of the former school building.

‘What makes Hideaway unique is its dual focus on massage and bathhouse,’ adds its founder, Grant Wee. ‘My favourite wellness treatment combines both, starting with hot and cold therapy and ending with a massage. Also, the design really reminds me of my old high school classrooms with their glass blocks.’

The sound playing throughout Hideaway deserves special mention, too. In place of ambient music are tracks by Wee’s favourite bands and artists, including Frank Ocean and Cigarettes After Sex, creating an unexpected – yet equally relaxing – sonic landscape. This curated approach extends to Hideaway's deftly curated retail collection, developed with local artisans, including a signature scent by Postcard, scalp serum by Jing Botanics, and handmade bath products from Savan Baths.

In an era where wellness architecture increasingly recognises the impact of environmental design on mental health, Hideaway’s attention to spatial psychology is noteworthy. After all, the most successful modern wellness spaces – some recently explored by Wallpaper* contributing editor, Emma O’Kelly – understand that architecture itself can be a healing tool. Hideaway exemplifies this principle through its use of layered screens, materials, mood lighting, and texture to create what Parable calls ‘moments that were intentionally framed’ – creating an experience where disconnection feels less like an effort and more like a welcome surrender.

‘A journey of understanding how colour, object, texture, and volume create a tangible part of an oasis for urban well-being formed our neuroaesthetic design philosophy for Hideaway,’ continues Parable’s Ken Yuktasevi. ‘Weaving past and future philosophies of wellbeing into a warm, gorgeous, and present moment for guests, the space is designed to make complete sense for those who are looking for the ultimate rejuvenation.’

That Hideaway happens to be in a converted school feels particularly fitting, considering its erudite and contemplative approach. But goes without saying that this time around, the curriculum is decidedly less tedious and considerably more restorative.

hideaway.sg

The latest addition to The Standard’s growing Asia-Pacific portfolio – after its Bangkok and Melbourne properties – marks another milestone for a brand that’s been turning heads since André Balazs unveiled the original Los Angeles property in 1999. That pioneering West Hollywood hotel set the template for the group’s blend of buzzy design and pop-art sensibilities, touchstones that now show up, a year behind schedule, in Singapore. Wedged into a tight space between the grande dame Shangri-La hotel and residences (keep your eyes peeled for the discreet signage), the slim eight-storey property has the feel of a private members’ club, hidden in plain sight along tony Orange Grove Road.

Wallpaper* checks in at: The Standard Singapore

What’s on your doorstep?

Designed by Verena Haller, the Standard’s global head of design and creative services, and local studio, DP Architects, the 143-room property is perfectly positioned between the retail diversions of Orchard Road and the leafy grounds of the Botanic Gardens. The demographic is a mix of well-heeled creative types and Gen Z influencers drawn by the promise of The Standard’s reputation for cultivating a sexy vibe in an intimate setting.

Who is behind the design?

For the hotel’s rooms and public spaces, local studio Ministry of Design’s Colin Seah has created what he calls ‘part quirky tropical oasis, part mellow party pad’, which translates into a grown-up Jetsons mood of modular furniture, low-key lounge music and reflective surfaces overlaid with decorative botanic touches.

Particularly effective are the terraced gardens and thick green walls that cascade down through public spaces like a tropical canyon, with the reception desk and Café Standard anchoring the ground floor. ‘I wanted to create something that was both disarming and energising in equal measure,’ says Seah who, in a playful nod to Singapore’s midcentury architectural heritage, has carpeted the bedroom corridors with an electric-blue hyper-scaled terrazzo pattern.

The wow factor

The gardens are the showstopper here. Lush with tropical foliage and wrapped around a long lap pool, they create unexpected moments of drama as you move between different levels. Artist Eric Tobua’s colour-saturated dreamscape installation in the reception – an oversized terrarium filled with crystalline ponds and orange groves – is a whimsical prelude to the actual gardens beyond.

The room to book

The rooms are on the small side, starting from 23 sq m studios – which the hotel’s literature euphemistically describes as ‘snug’ – and going up to the larger 43 sq m suites. All feature timber-ribbed canopies that extend from bedhead to ceiling, alongside floor-to-ceiling windows that look over the pool deck or the Shangri-La next door.

The minibar’s main attraction is the selection of small-batch liqueur, rum and whisky by local distiller Compendium infused with Malaysian molasses, hom mali rice, and coffee. Meanwhile, Thai designer Shone Puipia’s bathrobe is a perplexing fashion statement of pink lapel, black pockets, and cut-out holes in the armpits.

Word to the wise

Don’t overpack as there are no shelves or closets in any room below a suite category – just a clutch of hangers on a wall peg. Storage space is limited to a single under-bed drawer, though this seems to underscore the hotel’s positioning as a social hub rather than an in-room retreat. For maximum comfort, book either the Standard Suite with its glass-wrapped corner views, or the two-bedroom Suite Spot. And continuing the fine tradition of exhibitionism and voyeurism perfected by the Standard High Line in New York, the windows are completely see-through.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Café Standard on the ground floor provides all-day sustenance American-style (think grilled cheese sandwiches and kale salads), but the culinary heartbeat is Kaya, the hotel’s take on a Japanese izakaya. Here, Saran Yen Panya’s textured wallpaper installation of embroidered appliqué flowers provides an arresting backdrop for modern Japanese plates such as chilled fish noodles, deep-fried eel and charcoal-grilled beef tongue.

The swim-up pool bar around the corner is the perfect setting for afternoon cocktails and louche lounging, an affectation somewhat marred by the hive of windows of the Shangri-La residences next door that fairly loom over the fence.

Where to switch off?

With neither spa nor gym, the 40m lap pool is the Standard’s social focal point, particularly in the evenings when the surrounding gardens are lit up and the neighbouring towers create a dramatic urban amphitheatre – even if it can sometimes feel, for introverts especially, as if you’re the one who is centre stage.

Service with a smile?

The youthful service team are enthusiastic and plucky, even if there are occasional moments of hesitation. What they lack in experience, they more than make up for in their eagerness to please – a refreshing change from the sometimes clinical, by-the-numbers efficiency found in Singapore's more established properties.

The verdict

The Standard Singapore may not be the largest nor plushest property in the neighbourhood, but its small scale is balanced by personality, unusually good dining options, and relaxed mood. This is a social hub that understands its target audience perfectly – young creatives and social aspirants who appreciate quirky design, intimate spaces, and the sweet spot between urban energy and garden sanctuary.

The Standard Singapore is located at 12 Orange Grove Rd, Singapore 25835; standardhotels.com. Rates: from S$272

Need more inspiration on where to stay? Read our review of QT Singapore

There is no shortage of high-profile art fairs in Asia but in only its third outing, Art SG looks determined to put even more daylight between itself and its Southeast Asian rivals. This year’s edition – which coincides with Singapore Art Week 2025 (17-26 January) – brings together 105 blue-chip galleries and exhibitors from 30 countries, among them London’s Waddington Custot, Thaddaeus Ropac, Gagosian, White Cube, Neugerriemschneider and Taipei’s Eslite Gallery, alongside local hotshots Fost Gallery and Gajah Gallery.

The quality of both the participants and the programme is, perhaps, a reflection of the rising cachet of Singapore’s collectors, the Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024 pointing out that 97 per cent of Singapore’s high-net-worth collectors are not just the most optimistic about the global art market, they also rank among the highest in favouring art fairs to purchase art.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that Le Freeport Singapore, a high-security storage facility and tax-free zone near the airport, allows collectors, art dealers, and financial institutions to store and trade art and other investment-grade collectibles (such as wine, and precious metals) in a tax-exempt, climatically controlled environment.

For Art SG’s co-founder, Magnus Renfrew, the country’s existing collector base has been stimulated by the arrival of overseas collectors who are making Singapore their home. ‘This is the acknowledged hub for Southeast Asia, and it’s developing rapidly into the de facto nexus for the Indo Pacific. Beyond its status as the leading tech hub in Asia and centre for wealth management, the cultural landscape is developing, with new galleries, museums and private foundations opening in the city. All these factors make Singapore a key destination for global art audiences.’

This year’s programme is an energetic mix of art, many debuting at the fair, and talks featuring collectors and museum directors, with Art SG director Shuyin Yang particularly gung-ho about the series of film, video art and moving image artworks curated by Stefano Rabolli Pansera, the founding director of Bangkok Kunsthalle.

Ahead of the fair’s vernissage on 16 January, Wallpaper* takes an exclusive peek behind the hoardings at the Marina Bay Sands venue.

Antony Gormley

The Turner Prize laureate Antony Gormley continues his influential investigation of the human figure through architectural forms. Part of his ongoing Blockworks series, the sculpture breaks down the body into sharp geometric shapes, challenging our understanding of mass and void. Here, flesh is rendered in angles and planes, an altogether unsettling perspective that asks us to reconsider how our bodies relate to the spaces around them.

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones’ Celestial Gathering brings together the Nigerian artist's distinctive figures and patterns on a large canvas of exuberant hues. First shown at the Nigerian Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, the painting demonstrates his approach to colour and movement, weaving cultural narratives through abstracted forms. The work travels next to Seoul as part of Adeniyi-Jones’ first Korean exhibition at White Cube.

Melissa Tan

Singaporean visual artist, Melissa Tan’s piece stands as the largest work in her metal sculpture series that began in 2018. This 3m sculpture combines mirror-finished stainless steel, epoxy resin and laser-cut elements to explore womanhood through the mythological Greek goddesses. The artwork's intricate patterns incorporate classical art references and astronomical data, with metal folds corresponding to asteroid trajectories, here a stellar metaphor for cyclical destinies.

Kim Yun Shin

Spanning two decades, the Seoul-based, North Korea-born Kim Yun Shin's work explores materiality and natural forms through Quebracho wood sculptures – and fragmented paintings. Her sculptures investigate humanity's relationship with nature and time, while her canvases split into increasingly minute divisions, creating tension between expansion and compression. Following her UK debut at Lehmann Maupin London next month, Kim will present a major show in New York in spring.

Naraphat Sakarthornsap

Best known for his trenchant commentary on queer identities in Asian culture, the Thai video-artist Naraphat Sakarthornsap turns his eye to the hidden inequalities within Asia’s economically divided societies, using as his metaphor the ubiquitous garlands of fresh, perishable flowers. Within the context of immense wealth represented by the Singapore fair, the irony of this video piece is none too subtle.

David Salle

David Salle's New Pastoral 1, 2, 3 represents an intriguing shift in his practice. By running his 2000-2002 Pastoral Paintings through an AI system, Salle creates unexpected collisions of imagery, which he then reworks by hand. The result is a series of paintings of oil, acrylic and charcoal on linen that feel both familiar and strange – Tim Burton-esque compositions that hover between machine logic and human intervention.

Art SG will be showing 17-19 January 2025 at Marina Bay Sands, 10 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore, artsg.com

By their own admission, designers and architects creating their own homes can sometimes be their own worst clients, plagued, as they are, by over-design and hamstrung by hyper-self-criticism and second-guessing.

Happily, none of these drawbacks is evident in this Zen-like cocoon – a spacious 1,570 sq ft duplex Singapore apartment in the Bishan neighbourhood in the outskirts of the city centre – conceived by Alex Liu of local Right Angle Studio.

Step inside this refined Singapore apartment

The exterior of the relatively nondescript apartment block gives little hint of the disciplined serenity of the three-bedroom, three-bathroom interiors that feature an artful mix of Scandinavian and Japanese touchstones. A cluster of Fritz Hansen ‘Grand Prix’ dining chairs here, a ‘Cuba’ chair by Carl Hansen & Son there, and an oversized marble and limestone fruit bowl by John Pawson for When Objects Work lolling about the bottom of the stairs.

Elsewhere, low-slung futon beds and deeply set couch benches are framed by translucent sliding shoji doors and windows carved of solid ash which open out to green tree-tops. Completing this light-washed fantasy of a Japanese moment in the tropics is an air-well that rises up through the second floor, its entire height bookended by a faux skylight and Japanese maple.

The materials that Liu used also cleave to the conceit with oak laminate sheathing all the joinery work, alongside porcelain tiled floors, sintered stone for the kitchen counter top, and travertine and stucco for walls and display niches.

Which is not to say the project was not without its headaches, not least the wall area behind the dining room which Liu says had to be reworked nine times. ‘Our first drafts were too restricted and impeded spatial flow. Our solution was to re-orient the staircase which then allowed us to integrate the display pantry with the physical wall and optimise movement.’

The reorientation of the staircase also caused its own problems. The original layout landed directly into the dining room, but Liu wants to enhance traffic flow in the relatively restricted space. ‘We did multiple on-site experiments and simulations. Eventually, we concealed the last two steps within a raised bench.’

The painstaking approach to problem-solving seems to be a hallmark of the young studio, which Liu founded with his brother Jay in 2012. It’s a trait that is, perhaps, reflected in an unusually diverse portfolio that includes among its quotidian stable of residential homes, a bakery cafe, jewellery atelier, and even a public reading room – each project as bespoke and quietly satisfying as this apartment.

rightanglestudio.com.sg

Much of ancient city of Baia may be underwater these days, but there was a time when the sun-kissed spot on the north-west shore of the Gulf of Naples, Italy, was a fashionable resort and the toast of Rome’s well-heeled holidaymakers. Leave it to the Singapore-based restaurateur Beppe De Vito, no stranger himself to creating sybaritic culinary outposts across the island, to pay homage to Baia by reviving those halcyon days with such stylish pomp at his latest, eponymous bar and lounge.

Inside new Singapore bar Baia: soigné aesthetics and alcoholic genius

As locations go, the 5,000 sq ft Baia in Singapore is literally sitting pretty, De Vito and longtime collaborator, the interior designer David Edwards of Aston Design, making the most of the perch atop the sweeping crescent balcony above the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.

For starters, the best seats in the house are strung along the deeply set loggia, lined with timber floor planks and broad arches, for bracing views of Marina Bay, glittery skyscrapers, and the triptych towers of the Marina Bay Sands resorts.

Inside sprawls a double-tiered lounge sprinkled with low-slung sofas that are ideal for louche slouching. The ceiling is festooned with a shimmering pool of pendant glass lamps, whilst the far walls are framed by smaller arched recesses lined with sepia-toned pastoral etchings of old Roman ruins and sea nymphs hiding among flowing seaweed and botanicals.

But as soigné as Baia’s aesthetics are, it’s the bacchanalian cocktails that draw in the crowds. Conceived by local beverage consultants, Proof & Co – the alcoholic geniuses behind nightcap stalwart, 28 HongKongStreet – the drinks menu is ambitious in its fantastical concoctions that give more than a passing nod to ancient Rome.

Each drink is jocularly named – Sorrento Coast, Strombolian, Odyssey and Sunken City, for instance – and each is an exercise in excess, whether tonic mixed with seven-year-old Matusalem rum and Prosecco coffee, barrel-aged gin, bitters and vermouth aged in clay pots, or even an affogato of Ferrand 1840 Cognac smothered with a thick foam of vanilla and chocolate.

All this is sensibly paired with a gourmand’s spread of nibbles, such as Oscietra, platters of truffled chorizo and pistachio mortadella, pizzas laden with trout and ikura, barbecued Iberico pork jowl straccetti, and grilled Bavette steak.

Baia is located at 8 Raffles Avenue, Level 4, Esplanade Mall, Singapore, www.baia.sg

Since its debut in Australia’s Gold Coast in 2011, the QT hotel brand has been quietly gathering both steam and accolades, branching first across the country’s state capitals, then New Zealand and now, finally making landfall in Singapore. The freshly renovated 134-room QT Singapore sits within a stately 1927 neo-classical pile – originally built for the HQ of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company – that has housed in recent years, the Sofitel S/O and the Telegraph. Its bright, breezy, casual-chic vibe is a much-needed jolt to this part of town which bristles with blue-chip, but starchy, accounting, legal and banking firms.

Wallpaper* checks in at: QT Singapore

What’s on your doorstep?

The hotel’s address in the heart of the Central Business District explains its main demographic of business suits, whilst its Antipodean DNA draws in a sizeable contingent of Australian and New Zealander guests. But at the weekend, local staycationers are kept busy by the legendary Lau Pa Sat hawker centre across the road, and by the hotel’s convenient proximity to major subway lines, museums, and casinos.

Who is behind the design?

Fresh off his star turn creating the maximalist interiors of the Artyzen Singapore across town, the Sydney-based designer Nic Graham pitches up at the QT Singapore to deploy his familiar arsenal of bold colours, patterns and textures. Everything from the wallpaper above the beds and hallway rugs to the mirrored clerestories and illustrations of colonial Singaporean architecture in the elevators is elegant, modern riffs on both tropical Asian botanic themes and local cultural details. So thorough is the makeover that nothing remains of the hotel’s previous design incarnations, including the late Karl Lagerfeld’s work for the Sofitel S/O.

The room to book

Book one of the two Heritage Suites for their vast open-plan layout or, failing that, one of the coveted Balcony Suites that open out over buzzy Robinson Road and the looming skyscrapers of Raffles Place. Yet, regardless of the room category, millennial mod-cons will be pleased to hear a Nespresso coffee machine, iPad room controls, Chromecast connectivity, and wireless Bose speaker are all accounted for. And, for the follicularly obsessed, a Dyson Supersonic hair dryer and Dyson Corrale hair straightener are perfectly paired with toiletries created by the Australian hair stylist, Kevin Murphy.

The wow factor

Even in a city fairly accustomed to large bathrooms, the QT Singapore stands apart from the pack for its oversized en-suites, some so large their showers feature two rain-shower heads. In the upper category rooms especially, the bathroom extends into the bedroom with sliding glass doors opening on two sides like a stage set. The effect is dramatic for its wonderful sense of expansiveness and promise of a serene ablution experience.

Mini bar high?

The mini-bar is unusually well-stocked ranging from Bruichladdich single malt, Husk rum and St. George vodka, to sleep tonics, Laurent-Perrier bubbly and local beer. Banish midnight munchies with salted egg yolk potato ridges, and chilli crab popcorn.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Given the plenitude of gastronomic and alcoholic diversions within just a two-mile radius, the QT Singapore doesn’t try too hard to compete, offering just two excellent options, both designed by Nic Graham. The Cygnet Bar is a small, but handsomely dressed, watering spot, its drinks menu inspired by Manhattan. Pair an Eastside cocktail of gin, sherry, citrus, mint and tarragon with popcorn popped with duck fat, king crab and lettuce taco, and a duck lasagne hit with porcini cream. If all that sounds incredibly inventive, it’s because the Australian chef Sean Connolly consulted on the menu. His self-titled in-house steakhouse, Cygnet by Sean Connolly, is a homage to Australian steak - think pasture-fed Black Angus, and F1 Wagyu - alongside a haul of elevated surf favourites such as Cornish cod with leek and oyster chowder, and Boston lobster drenched in garlic butter.

Where to switch off

Lined with an eye-catching geometric tiled pattern, the 25-m lap pool is the centrepiece of both the hotel (because there’s no spa) and the sixth-floor rooftop bar. Come evening, there’s more than a hint of Blade Runner noir to be up there surrounded by towering skyscrapers, all ablaze with lights and neon signs. On the drinks menu are refreshing Mexican-inflected cocktails hit with jalapeño, cinnamon, agave, watermelon and tequila.

Service with a smile?

Both local Singaporeans and frequent visitors will attest to the fact that service levels in Singapore can often oscillate between reticence and indifference. And whilst the service corps at QT Singapore may have some way go to before matching their counterparts at the Ritz-Carlton Millennia Singapore, they earn points for their ready smiles and willingness to step forward, a trait that probably owes much to the gregarious stewardship of its Australian GM, Doron Whaite. Kudos especially to a charming front desk staff who noticed us waiting listlessly in the lobby for our next appointment, and floated up to ask if she could be of help. More of that solicitousness, please.

The verdict

Superficially, QT Singapore would qualify as a business hotel simply because of its address, but both hardware and software gently tug the hotel toward the urban retreat category. Yes, each room features comfortable working desks, but the furnishings and trappings are so tempting and comfortable that you’d be forgiven for snapping shut the laptop and heading up to the pool for a mezcal margarita.

QT Singapore, 35 Robinson Rd, Singapore 068876, tel +65 6701 6800, qthotels.com. Rates: from S$395

The Singaporean addiction to K-Pop and Korean TV drama series continues unabated, a state of affairs that reaches its cultural apotheosis in the vast number of Korean eateries scattered across the island. Determined to stand firmly apart from the pack is Odem, a new bijou makgeolli bar and restaurant designed by London-based Nice Projects – also behind the design of restaurant Claudine in Singapore.

Odem: the first artisanal Makkoli bar and restaurant in Singapore

Set within New Bahru – an old high school block transformed into a lifestyle and creative hub – the 32-seater features, literally, a heady collection of the traditional Korean fermented rice liquor paired with upbeat Korean fare.

The design brief, say Nice Projects’ founders Simone McEwan and Sacha Leong, was ‘to create a versatile space where the foliage of the outdoor terrace and the sunlight caters for a lunch crowd, but transforms into a lively and stylish, yet informal bar at night.’

The key to unlocking the bifurcated design is the row of half-charred timber panels that run along the walls. ‘We came across charred timber as a material when i was researching makgeolli wineries,’ Leong says. ‘We realised we could use the pattern to evoke a distinctive, warm cinematic mood. The goal was to capture a sense of place by re-interpreting Korean design and craft.’

Once the visual anchor was in place, Leong and McEwan layered textures – lashings of red linoleum paired with granite table tops, lacquered joinery, metal ceiling, fabric pendant lamps created by Seoul-based AGO Lighting, and slim red-stained timber chairs that were designed in collaboration with Korean design studio, Studio Word.

The bar is clad in handmade ceramic tiles which the designers say allude to onggi, the black earthen pots that are traditionally used to ferment makgeolli.

Meanwhile, Bae Yumi has traded in her toque as the private chef of the Korean ambassador to head up Odem’s kitchen, her MO being modern Korean fare paired with craft makgeolli, among them Yakju, Takju and Chungju. Recent tasty headliners have included soy-glazed brioche slathered with Gamtae seaweed butter; and boneless beef short ribs charred over hot coals and served with a pickled grapefruit salad and chilli vinaigrette.

Odem is located at 46 Kim Yam Rd, #01-17, Singapore 239351, odem.sg

Prized for its durability, low maintenance and pliability, stainless steel may be a ubiquitous material; but in the hands of Nathan Yong, it becomes a thoughtful metaphor for cultural identity and social displacement.

Coinciding with this year’s edition of Singapore Design Week, ‘Being and Nothingness - A Discourse on Identity’ is the Singaporean designer’s latest salvo in a career-long investigation into the prickly relationship between art, industrial design, and social dysfunction.

Nathan Yong’s ‘Being and Nothingness - A Discourse on Identity’

Yong wanted to work with stainless steel precisely because of its ubiquity as a building material in Singapore. ‘We use it as sidewalk rails. It’s in our MRT subway stations and even in our hawker centres,’ he says, explaining that urban planners prize the material for its efficiency, colour-neutrality and ability to withstand scratches and stains.

It belatedly occurred to Yong – who counts Donald Judd and Dan Flavin as design polestars – that these same qualities are to be found within the Singaporean psyche; he points out, half joking, that ‘we are clean, efficient, easy to maintain, and able to gel with our surroundings. In fact, we are a society that has modernised at fast speed. I feel that this has resulted in a loss of individuality.’

Out of this observation was born the current collection of home furniture. Comprising 11 quotidian pieces ranging from a sofa, a standing screen and a vase to a lounger, a chair and a bar stool – each constructed of mirror-polished Grade 304 stainless steel – ‘Being and Nothingness’ is superbly tactile in its combination of rectilinear and curved lines; familiar in the silhouette, while a little alien in expression.

‘What interests me here is the interplay between the reflective qualities of stainless steel and its inherent lack of warmth, and how, in turn, that challenges us to look for a balance between efficiency and human connection, between order and individuality.’

Interestingly, Yong says that while his intention was to dissect the bland homogenisation of a culture, the process of creating the collection was tricky and nuanced. Working with a family of metalsmiths in northern Malaysia, the immediate challenge was to find the right thickness so that the sheets were structurally strong and not flimsy, yet retained a visual lightness. These then had to be painstakingly ground to create the welding joints, before each completed piece was finally hand-polished to a mirrored finish.

Beyond being fascinating objets de la maison, Yong – who is currently working on a new home brand called Nathan Home – hopes his new collection invites a degree of introspection, especially in the context of the material’s public urban provenance, latterly transplanted into the private space of a home. ‘A chair becomes inviting and chilling at the same time,’ he says, thinking, perhaps, of the tubular, beautifully awkward chair, ‘Article no. 1’.

Whether the average furniture aficionado will quite reach the level of introspection about a chair or bar stool that Yong demands – even one as rigorously designed as his is – remains to be seen, but if nothing else, you’d be sitting pretty in the process.

‘Nothingness – A Discourse on Identity’ is showing at Art Commune Gallery until 16 October 2024, www.artcommune.com.sg. The collection is also available for sale at the gallery, in limited editions of one, three, five, eight and ten pieces. Prices start from S$7,000. www.nathanyongdesign.com

The Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024 has been revealed, highlighting 20 studios from around the world as some of the year's most exciting newcomers.

Conceived in 2000 as an international index of emerging architectural talent, the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory is our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe. While always championing the best and most promising young studios, over the years, the project has showcased inspiring work with an emphasis on the residential realm. Now including more than 500 alumni, the Architects’ Directory is back for its 24th edition.

Join us as we launch this year’s survey – 20 young studios, from Australia, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Canada, China, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia, the UK, the USA, with plenty of promise, ideas and exciting architecture.

Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024

Here are the 20 practices celebrated in this year's Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024 – spanning 19 countries and five continents.

Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024: Europe

Kasawoo, UK

London-based Kasawoo was founded by Kyriaki (Katie) Kasabalis and Darius Woo in 2020, after they met during their studies at Cornell University in the USA. Their studio was established with an aim to work on bringing great design to everyone. 'Early on in our practice, we discovered that good design was often out of reach for most people, and we made a commitment to change that. For us, good design does not need to come with a big price tag. That is why we set up our practice to bring this ethos to life,' they say.

This desire is combined with an approach that draws on a more ‘gentle’ architecture – minimalism, not through formal reduction, but rather through the efficiency of both design gestures and resources.

Brown Urbanism, UK

Richard Brown's Brown Urbanism was born some ten years ago, as a London-based architecture and urbanism design practice with a mission to 'create better places for people to inhabit that are inclusive, engaging and meaningful'. As part of this philosophy, the studio works on a range of typologies and scales, including commercial, residential, retail and hospitality; always with a focus on sustainable, low-cost, high-impact design.

'Simple, well-thought-through design that works for the client while creating distinctive and meaningful urban environments,' says Brown. 'We are interested in how design can better reflect, support and enable new ways of inhabiting and experiencing space. We are particularly interested in how the home can support the complexities of life’s requirements – from working from home and experiencing nature to treating the home as a performative cultural place.'

Mast, Denmark

Mast, founded in 2021 by Australian architect Marshall Blecher and Danish maritime designer and architect Magnus Maarbjerg, is on a mission to improve the relationship between the city and the sea. 'We are motivated by the amazing potential that comes from reconnecting with water, as we have seen the amazing effect that even small improvements to water access and quality can produce in cities,' Blecher explains.

Specialising in architecture on or near water, the duo have completed several small structures floating around Copenhagen harbour. There is the 20 sq m tiny prototype floating island KBHØ1 (KBH for Copenhagen and Ø for island) with its 6m tall Linden tree; and the portable ‘harbour bath’, or Dyppezone, which can be freely moved around the city’s waterways, creating intimate bathing experience along its way.

Studio Argus, Estonia

Architect Margit Argus brings more than 20 years of experience in interior design, fine arts, and architecture to her young and fast-emerging architecture studio. The practice, based in Tallinn, is rooted in a Nordic aesthetic, bringing together local Estonian vernacular and a fine attention to detail. Current projects include a seaside hotel in Tallinn, a high-rise residential building, and a university campus in Tallinn, alongside a handful of schools and single-family houses.

Studio Collaboratorio, Finland

Young Helsinki practice Studio Collaboratorio was founded in 2016 by Finnish architect Kristiina Kuusiluoma and Italian architect Martino De Rossi. The dynamic, emerging practice aims to 'create beautiful habitats by using natural and ecological materials while at the same time paying close attention to the place and its history: more beauty, communality, affordability and humanity! Interactive cooperation, profound ecology and long life cycle are at the heart of everything.'

Branco del Rio, Portugal

Founded by Paula del Rio and João Branco, the architecture studio Branco del Rio is based in the riverfront city of Coimbra, Portugal’s former capital. Motivated by curiosity and influenced by the ever-changing city around them, the architects view each project as an opportunity to investigate different contexts and topics. Gathering inspiration from their travels, books and colleagues the team say: ‘We are convinced that what we do can improve quality of life. We live and work in spaces we designed, we share spaces we designed with friends. It is a privilege and also a motivation.’

Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024: Asia

Playball Studio, India and Spain

Established in 2017, Playball Studio is an Indo-Spanish architecture firm led by architects Celia Fernández Duque and Ronak Gangdev. Based in Rajkot, India, and Valladolid, Spain, the studio works on a range of uniquely contextual residential and commercial projects, often within urban conditions.

The word ‘Playball’ reflects the studio’s philosophy of always ‘playing ball’ and prioritising the needs of its clients. Fernández Duque and Gangdev are also conscious of the impact of their projects on the physical environment. The studio’s core strength lies in striking a harmonious balance between the organic and the technical, simplicity and refinement, and form and functionality.

Tsing-Tien Making, China

Suzhou-born Freja Bao's studio, Tsing-Tien Making (TTM), was founded following the architect's education in London's Bartlett School of Architecture and stints in Japan, in the offices of KPF Architects and Kengo Kuma & Associates. Bao set up her independent practice in her home town in 2023 and has been going from strength to strength since.

'As a collective deeply passionate about architecture, we at Tsing-Tien Making thrive on embracing challenges and infusing each project with innovative experimentation,' she says. Beyond her first completed project, featured here, Bao adds that there's more to come: 'Our focus extends to a range of exciting undertakings, including the development of a retirement house, the restoration of a scientist’s former residence, and the conceptualisation of a private collector’s room.'

L Architects, Singapore

Boutique studio L Architects was founded in 2016 by Lim Shing Hui. Based in Singapore, the practice focuses on creating homes that enhance the living experience. ‘Architecture has the power to evoke a wide range of emotions within us. You have to find the soul of the space,’ says Lim. ‘The search [for this] is what keeps me motivated. I believe that a good piece of architecture has the ability to touch the human soul, communicate messages, stir empathy and at the same time quietly delight – and this in itself transcends mere physical realms.’

The studio also believes it is important to stay rooted in its culture, in particular the experiences, cultural background and personal journey of its founder, allowing this to inform the shape and unique style of each residential design, giving it a distinct authorship.

Studio Heech, South Korea

Working across a range of creative fields that encompass architecture, industrial design, furniture, and interactive performance installation, Studio Heech welcomes multi-layered, rich experiences. Meanwhile, ‘the craftsmanship of “making things” is still important in the 21st century,’ says Park. With a keen eye for detail, the studio strives to create its contemporary architectural expression through techniques that bridge technology and traditional manufacturing – ultimately addressing the fundamentals of urban architecture.

Championing both the traditional and the contemporary, the studio often creates intriguing architectural forms. As with many forward-thinking practices, Studio Heech integrates sustainability into its work. From planning through to construction, Park makes sure to collaborate with a wide network of engineers, artists and craftsmen to broaden ideas and spark curiosity within the creative process.

Touch Architect, Thailand

Based in the bustling Thai hub of Bangkok, Touch Architect crafts residences drawing on its cultural ties and environment, while adding sustainable architecture practices. When approaching a project, the duo applies a 'bottom-up approach’, meaning they focus on the functionality of the space before layering on aesthetics. ‘For us, good architecture must be functional, timeless, and sustainable,’ they say. ‘While beauty and aesthetics are also important, it comes as an enhancement which completes the architecture. Great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis I Kahn inspire this philosophy in our work.’

Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024: Africa

Fleury Atallah Architectes, Tunisia

Fleury Atallah Architectes is one of the exciting emerging architecture practices to be included in the annual Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024. Founded in 2011 by Catherine Fleury and Chacha Atallah, it has offices in Toulon, France and Carthage, Tunisia. The studio focuses mainly on residential projects for private clients who are after a sensitive, sober and context-specific approach as well as inventive and beautiful solutions to architectural and interior challenges; but it has also designed art galleries and wine production facilities.

SI.SA. Nigeria

African culture motivates Lagos-based architecture firm SI.SA. ‘We are influenced by the abstracted forms found in African traditional art and their ability to convey power and meaning,' says founder Seun Oduwole.

Founded in 2015, the ten-person firm aims 'to make beautiful buildings that enhance the built environment’. Dedicated to the betterment of communities, SI.SA focuses on inclusive and socially responsible architectural designs. Boasting a diverse portfolio of residential, educational, and cultural projects, the practice has worked on some impressive projects, such as the colourful John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in Lagos.

Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024: Americas

AD-WO, USA

Ethiopia-born Emanuel Admassu and Australia-born Jen Wood formed AD-WO in New York in 2015. The young art and architecture studio brings together their 'divergent' backgrounds to create valuable 'friction' within their practice – which, combined with their agility and multi-disciplinary approach, gives them a distinct edge when it comes to crafting works that are 'transnational' and experimental. The portfolio of the research-based studio spans from images and objects to furniture, tapestries, installations, and buildings.

Studio Porto, Brazil

The emerging practice of Camila Porto stands out through its contemporary fusion of Brazilian culture with a cosmopolitan attitude. Studio Porto's projects are intended to be timeless, balanced, and hospitable, Porto explains – but functionality is equally paramount. Attention to detail, empathy, and integration with nature are also strengths.

'Our greatest influence is Brazilian modernism, which brings with it a legacy of architectural solutions guided by simplicity and elegance. We combine this foundation with a contemporary and global perspective, integrating elements of nature and prioritising people's wellbeing. This combination of values shapes our approach uniquely and innovatively in architecture and design,' Porto explains.

TigerQi Architecture, British Virgin Islands and Saint Kitts and Nevis

Lavina Liburd started TigerQi Architecture in 2013, having previously worked at different firms and gained experience on a wealth of projects, from transportation and civic briefs to luxury residences and commercial buildings. With this under her belt, Liburd set up shop on her own, with a focus on a contemporary design approach that embraces simplicity and minimalism.

Due to the climate and topography of its secluded Caribbean home, the practice centres on three key principles; creating healthy buildings that support the social health and wellbeing of its clients; embracing hillside living to maximise views and light; and creating architecture that is designed to serve its community as a whole. These underlying principles are threaded into the studio's design process, wrapped up in a tropical modernism aesthetic.

Svima, Canada

Starting Svima five years ago, Anamarija Korolj and Leon Lai, looked towards nature and ecology. During our era of mass construction, the studio fine-tunes its mission by focusing on three key pillars: air, light and greenery. With this in mind, their designs draw on the blossoming biomes of Canada, while balancing a human-centric approach, ensuring that the client receives a design that provides ample access to nature. The studio's portfolio brings together a series of schemes that nod towards creating a more equitable and sustainable future.

Seeing themselves as ‘not only as designers of buildings but as stewards of human experience’, Korolj and Lai seek to unite art and architecture to ‘continuously leverage the two mediums as vehicles with a reciprocal relationship in pushing the boundaries of the visual and spatial expressions.’ The creative duo strives to implement projects with a sense of place, resilience and inclusivity, ‘reflecting the essence of what it means to be Canadian.’

Büro Koray Duman, USA

This agile New York and Istanbul architecture practice – Büro Koray Duman – was founded by architect Koray Duman in 2014. The studio is a proudly immigrant- and LGBTQ-led business, comprising a team of architects that represent a diverse mix of nationalities and experiences. As a result, its output is equally varied and captivating - from projects for MoMA PS1 Museum, to the Finnish Cultural Institute NY, the Noguchi Museum, IKSV, artist Richard Prince, the American Society for Muslim Advancement, Council for Fashion Designers of America, and Design Within Reach.

Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2024: Oceania

Alexander Symes, Australia

Architect Alexander Symes founded his namesake practice in 2014 with a vision to challenge the current status quo in sustainability in architecture, pushing and challenging the field's boundaries. With a ‘hands-on’ approach and a speciality in delivering passive homes that don't impact their context negatively, the practice aims to create residential design with a purpose.

‘On a macro level, this ensures we contribute to protecting biodiversity and providing a future-proofed housing stock,’ says Symes, ‘while on a micro level providing a healthy and resilient home for our clients in the changing climate.’ With this in mind, it is arguably only natural that the environment would be the studio’s biggest influence. Keeping context and nature at the forefront of its decisions, the practice enjoys working with bio-based construction and existing materials and suppliers. The result is buildings with a natural feel and a reduced carbon footprint.

Spacecraft Architects, New Zealand

Spacecraft Architects founders Roberston and Gittos often tackle limited budgets and the smaller scale in their work – a challenge they enjoy taking on to make architecture more accessible. Their own headquarters is nestled off the back of a self-built house in Whanganui, and is a clear representation of the studio's ethos.‘ The constraints offered by tight budgets and difficult (affordable) sites breed creativity and drive our design work,’ the creative duo told Wallpaper*.

With an interest in buildings that do not rely on luxurious materials or highly detailed construction, the pair hope to create powerful architecture even within the simplest structures. Working on infill housing across New Zealand opened up a niche for a wealth of recent work focused on the rising appeal of co-housing, in various forms of multi-residential projects and apartment builds.

If you still need proof that Singapore is quietly transforming itself into a regional design and creative dynamo, Singapore Design Week 2024 (26 September to 6 October) is exhibit A.

This year’s theme, ‘People of Design’, presents an insight into what event organiser DesignSingapore Council describes as ‘the everyday visionaries who shape our society through design… and enhance how we experience life’.

The remit is as broad as it is ambitious, but even a cursory scan of the programme shows there is plenty of breathing space for the designers, curators and artists to explore the festival’s three pillars: Design Futures (the future of design and designing that future), Design Marketplace (lifestyle trends viewed through a Southeast Asian lens), and Design Impact (innovative solutions for a better world).

As Aric Chen, the artistic director of Het Nieuwe Institut and one of the speakers at the week’s marquee event, Design Futures Forum, puts it, ‘Singapore has a thriving design [scene], alongside government policies – especially around regenerative practices – that are among the most progressive in the world. And that makes Singapore Design Week a fantastic platform for bringing them together.’

Given that so much is on show over the 11-day event, we sifted through the offerings to present our top picks.

What to see at Singapore Design Week 2024

EMERGE@FIND

Emerge showcases South-East Asian contemporary design under the aegis of satellite event FIND – Design Fair Asia. Curator Suzy Annetta’s focus on 50 emerging and established designers from Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – with their works up for sale at online art gallery, The Artling – builds on her observation that Asian designers are ‘contemplating the state of the world and thinking about how they can comment, reflect, contribute and bring about change via a wide range of creative approaches. My take is that identity, culture and the environment are top of mind.’

Headlining the crop are Thai designers Saran Yen Panya whose ‘Vanity Collection’ of mirrors dissects identity in an era of social media influencers; and Indonesian collective Threadapeutic, whose ‘Peek a Window’ – room dividers constructed of lace and brocade – wonders what kind of design deserves our attention.

26-28 September at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre.

Future Impact 2: Homecoming Showcase

Fresh from its showing at Milan Design Week 2024, Future Impact 2’s debut on home turf has been much anticipated, not least for its exploration of innovative design solutions to social problems. Gabriel Tan’s ‘Good Gourd – Hybrid Basketry’, for instance, features colourful table lamps handwoven around 3D-printed resin shells as a demonstration of how traditional crafts can be preserved while reducing human labour.

David Lee takes a similar tack, his laser-cut ‘Monolith’ chair and table addressing not just environmental concerns but also the sustainability of resource-intense manufacturing practices.

Asian Civilisations Museum

Marina Design District

Three Singaporean districts – Bras Basah/Bugis, Orchard and Marina Bay – have been picked to spotlight special design commissions and exhibitions that reflect the character of each. At the Marina Design District, curator and designer Nathan Yong’s ‘Neu Folk: Bridging Tradition and Future in Design’ explores the future of Singaporean design in the context of the collective spirit of communities.

Millenia Walk

  Design Fair Asia

A blue-chip roll-call of furniture, interiors and design brands, including Hansgrohe and Toyo, descends on Marina Bay Sands for the third edition of Asia’s largest design trade fair. The headliner will be FIND Global Summit, a pow-wow of over 50 property developers, architects and design mavens curated by Wallpaper* China editor Yoko Choy.

Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre

So Plast!c by Studio Karyn Lim

Industrial designer Karyn Lim’s solution to the endemic problem of single-use plastic is to convert bags into plastic yarn, which she then crochets into skeletal-like string baskets, while bottle caps and food and drink packaging are converted into eco-polymer sheets to make handsome, low-slung tables.

26-28 September at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre

Singapore Design Week 2024 runs from 26 September to 6 October 2024 at various locations across the island. www.sdw.sg

In partnership with Hyundai

The last place anyone would have ever expected Corey Lee to open a casual Korean restaurant is an industrial district, much less at Hyundai’s slick new innovation centre in Singapore. Yet, to hear the three-Michelin-starred chef tell it, his freshman collaboration with the automobile powerhouse was a timely opportunity to explore memory, culture, emotion and even time through the lens of a thoughtfully conceived menu based on classic Korean dishes.

When Lee – the Seoul-born former head chef at The French Laundry, as well as the driving force behind celebrated San Francisco restaurants Benu and San Ho Won – first met with Hyundai, it was for a tentative exploration of how he might enhance its new ‘smart urban mobility hub’, which is committed to sustainable human-centric innovation and a highly automated flexible production system. A concern for sharing the beauty of Korean culture – through authentic local cuisine with an innovative contemporary touch – formed the basis for the hub’s new restaurant Na Oh, which translates to a koan-like ‘moving from inside out’.

Corey Lee on Na Oh and melding modernity with tradition

The timing of the conversation, Lee says, was fortuitous. ‘Na Oh and its location have aligned perfectly with where I am in my career right now. I opened Benu in 2010, when I was 33. I don’t have so much to prove these days. I’m now freer to explore the more creative side of running a restaurant. I get to enjoy the process and perhaps even add to Singapore’s dynamic dining scene.’

Hyundai was keen to provide a healing experience in a quiet space away from Singapore’s city centre, as well as allow for an innovative brand narrative. The resulting 40-seater restaurant, tucked away in a light-filled corner on the building’s third floor, is a tranquil haven of dark stone, warm-hued timber, geometric ceiling screens and delicate rod lamps, artfully draped with thick sheets of handmade hanji paper that throw diffused light over the dining tables.

In dressing the space, Lee and Hyundai worked with a gold-plated team of Korean creatives and artisans, who refashioned classical Korean elements with a deft modern touch. Traditional ceremonial vessels have been reshaped and handcrafted by tableware specialist H’soban into striking dessert bowls, window shades are of natural oksa silk woven by fifth generation weavers Hu’s Silk, while the normally voluminous silhouette of the hanbok (traditional Korean attire) has been slimmed down by K-pop-favourite Leesle to create smartly tailored, minimalist uniforms for kitchen and serving staff.

This almost maniacal attention to detail – embracing the beauty of craft, as Lee puts it – creates a contemporary version of a Korean interior that savvily avoids worn-out decorative tropes while retaining a vibe that, especially if you’re a dyed-in-the- wool traditionalist, is both familiar and comforting.

It’s a tricky balancing act but it is one that is skilfully played out in Lee’s deliberately unfussy, seasonal menu – though he is careful to stress that casual does not equate to cheap. ‘The style at Na Oh is to be considerate and to guide guests through the menu a bit more than one would in a truly casual restaurant,’ he says. ‘In that sense, an element of fine dining does come through. At the same time, I want to make sure that the food here isn’t dumbed down either. Yes, it’s modern, but it’s also connected with Korean traditions that have evolved in a warm and relatable way.’

He points to the samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup), which appears on the current summer menu as an example of this evolution. Composed of a young chicken stuffed with rice, mushrooms, green scallion sauce and kimchi, it is one of the most recognisable dishes in the Korean culinary repertoire and yet, as Lee points out, it’s also a dish that, even in upmarket restaurants, tends to be pre-made, pre-stuffed and pre-cooked. In contrast, at Na Oh, the kitchen prepares the fowl in a cast iron pot heated to 200°C and 50 per cent humidity, which allows the meat to be slow-cooked on site.

Cold noodles are prepared Pyongyang-style, with thin strips of beef that have been cured for two days, served with marinated quails’ eggs, and doused with a pure, clean broth. Even the jang, or traditional sauces that range from soy and doenjang to gochujang, are naturally fermented and aged in giant glazed onggi pots handcrafted by 87-year-old pottery master, Chun-ung Bang.

Vegetables, meanwhile, come from two on-site hydroponic smart farms, unapologetically futuristic with their double-height conservatories and white robotic harvesters that, each day, collect around 30kg of seasonal leaves, including ice plant, sorrel, romaine lettuce, red coral lettuce, crystal green lettuce, Swiss chard, mustard, kale and mizuna.

Lee will be the first to tell you that any discussion about Korean food is a polarising one. It doesn’t help that the Korean restaurants typically covered by the press tend to be newly opened establishments that do not represent the full Korean repertoire. Na Oh presented him with the opportunity to craft a truly Korean menu and to create an unintimidating experience that is approachable for the neophyte, while resonating with connoisseurs in a meaningful way.

‘We can’t be all things to everyone,’ he admits. ‘But we have to be confident and remember why we’re doing this – which is to create not just the best dining experience we can, but also one that guests will want to repeat. But how do you create one that bridges age and values, when the goal is to have someone dine with us and say at the end of the meal, “I want to come back here with my parents”?’

If it’s not already clear, for Lee, this partnership with Hyundai – the largest and most ambitious project that he’s ever done – is both an opportunity for exploration and a daring experiment. ‘The thing is, we don’t have a common vocabulary to describe even taste.’

That he has chosen to start his exploration halfway around the world from his hometown serves only to emphasise the seriousness of his intent. ‘When you open a restaurant overseas, the goal is different. It’s no longer just a business opportunity. It’s personal.’

hyundai.com/sg/naoh, @naohrestaurant

Cartier’s iconic Trinity ring turns a youthful 100 this year and to mark the occasion, the French jewellery house has conceived Trinity 100, a commemorative pop-up exhibition, and sent it out on a whistle stop tour that kicked off in Shanghai in July and Singapore a couple of weeks later, with Tokyo in October, and a still secret city in the US in December.

To call the exhibition a pop-up, though - at least, if what we’re seeing in Singapore is any indication - is to do the whole production a disservice.

The exhibition, created by curators including Paris-based artistic director Jérôme Sans and designed by Cartier’s in-house team, artfully weaves a multitude of disciplines - not least, music, sculpture, digital art, couture fashion, video art, photography and even kinetic art - into the history, evolution and design of Trinity.

Spread over seven rooms on the second floor of The Arts House - a handsome fin de siècle riverside pile that was once Singapore’s parliament in the colonial days - the exhibition begins in a striking way with a video broadcast on three stacked semi-circular screens, the story of the three Cartier brothers, Louis, Pierre and Jacques, segueing into sepia-toned photographs of the three flagship boutiques the brothers each headed in Paris, London and New York.

In the next room, an elegant black oval is framed by perfectly lit vitrines that track the Trinity’s design evolution through the decades first as the OG interlocking bands of rose, white and yellow gold, and later reimagined as necklace, bracelet, knuckle-duster, and even cigarette lighter, alongside historical ad campaigns.

The third room is particularly heartfelt - a bijou offbeat tribute made up of cut-out cloud, sketches and projected handwriting to Jean Cocteau who famously wore two Trinity rings on his left pinky and who told the actor, Jean Marais that the first band represented Cocteau, the second, Marais, and the third, their love.

Cartier’s Trinity 100 Pop-Up is currently showing at Singapore’s The Arts House, 15-23 July 2024. https://www.cartier.sg/en-sg/trinity100.html#artworks

For the Indonesian restaurateur and hotelier Ronald Akili, the idea of food extends beyond simple notions of taste and presentation to embrace larger, almost existential koans of ‘Where does our food come from? How is it made? How does it connect us?’

These questions loom large in his latest Singaporean venture Air – an acronym for awareness, impact and responsibility – which aims to be not just a restaurant, but also a circular (read sustainable) culinary campus and cooking club. Aiding the cause is a crack team comprising long-time architecture collaborator OMA, which also worked on Akili’s Potato Head Studios, and powerhouse chefs Matthew Orlando (ex-head chef at Copenhagen’s Noma and Amass) and Will Goldfarb (Bali’s Room4Dessert).

AIR CCCC: circularity inspires the menu and the design

Set in sprawling 40,000 sq ft of extant jungle, greenery, and vegetable and herb gardens, the physical restaurant is a refurbished two-storey building that was once part of a clubhouse for the Singapore Civil Service Sports Council in the 1970s, its elegant, low-slung silhouette almost obscured by towering tropical trees.

The simple lines of the restaurant are complemented by the chefs’ culinary approach of actively using the byproducts of responsibly sourced food, such as fish bones, to discover new flavours and even new ingredients.

‘How were we to respond architecturally to such an innovative approach?’ asked the project’s co-lead, Shinji Takagi.

The answer lay in rejecting any notion of greenwashing, including importing recycled material from Europe, or installing expensive and, given the site orientation, relatively ineffective solar energy. Instead, the architects limited their major interventions to terracing a 100m-long winding walkway up from the car park, cleaning up the existing bones of the building, and relying on passive cooling and shading from the surrounding thick foliage.

All of which then leaves the stage clear for Orlando and Goldfarb’s offbeat menu that mines South East Asian produce with a gimlet eye for the novel and sustainable, not least lavash and noodles, both made of pressure-cooked fish bones, chocolate made of cocoa husks, leftover cashew pulp transformed into ricotta, and granita concocted from fermented papaya skins.

To the side of the open kitchen and bar, and the dining room dressed with handsome furniture made of recycled timber and plastic bottles by Spanish product designer Andreu Carulla, is a vitrine where the chefs conjure and experiment on projects that will eventually land on the ever-evolving menu.

Besides the challenge of connecting the building to nature, OMA’s co-project lead, David Gianotten, says Air has been a complex juggling act that involved integrating the visions of an ambitious entrepreneur, two world-renowned chefs, a product designer and OMA as architects. ‘We had many discussions and workshops which in the end led to the current result, which we believe reflects our collective uncompromised vision of all of us.’

www.aircccc.com

The completion of Terminal 2 at Changi Airport crafts a new architectural language for airport design (and follows the airport’s Jewel hub by Safdie Architects, which opened in 2019). The project was designed by Boiffils Architecture, a family-owned firm founded in 1984, with a rich portfolio of projects throughout Asia. The terminal expansion was approached by drawing on Singapore’s artistic and cultural heritage, inspired by the surrounding flora and natural light to form an open gateway into the Asian Garden City.

Changi Airport's Terminal 2: an organic traveller experience

Over the course of five years, the expansion project stretched over 120,000 sq m across three levels. Led by Basile Boiffils, a second-generation architect following in the footsteps of its founders, the scheme implements an alternative approach to traditional airport design, with an emphasis on traveller experience, rather than on the management of passenger flow. 

'We wanted the architecture to be a source of emotions and a stimulant of senses through its connections with nature,’ says Boiffils. ‘As lovers of nature and gardens, we drew those inspirations from vegetation, topography, geology, minerals, ponds, streams, currents, water reflections, and much more to create spaces and forms that blur the boundaries between architecture and landscape.’

Changi Airport was originally built in the 1990s, and renovated in 2003. When taking on the terminal expansion, Boiffils wanted to reintroduce romanticism into commercial travel, a nod to its heyday during the 1950s and 1960s. The French practice introduced relaxing experiences to soothe tension in what can be a high-stress environment, through a series of visual, audio and interactive stimuli. 

Basile explains: ‘Travel in the 21st century is filled with stressful moments – from check-in to security lines, and immigration – and we wanted to provide extensive transparency to enable views of the steps ahead as a way of reducing anxiety derived from the unknown and unfamiliarity with the airport.’

Of course, efficiency isn't compromised within the design. Taking note of the firm's previous work within luxury hotels, boutiques and malls, the space is treated with a mix of elegant earth tones, high-tech elements, and organic materials, enveloped in flora native to Singapore. In contrast to a typical sterile airport feel, the architecture evokes panoramas of land and sea, with linear detailing that mimics geological formations.

Green columns scale the atriums throughout, supporting an open floor plan. With an unobstructed view spanning the immigration zone, baggage collection, and ‘meet and greet’ area, this flow allows for a seamless feel and overall efficiency, encouraging travellers to understand the space and take moments of pause before moving forward with their journey. 

changiairport.com 

boiffils.com

Dubai’s Gallery Collectional is introducing its inaugural commissioned series, Urban Fabric, headed by design specialist (and Wallpaper* China Editor) Yoko Choy. Gathering twenty-eight pieces of collectible design created by artists from China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, the collection aims to reflect on ‘contemporary craftsmanship’, exploring uses for a multitude of materials in conjunction with traditional artisanal practices from across Asia. 

'Urban Fabric' in Dubai

According to Choy, ‘convergence’ is the essential theme of the show. Speaking to the technological acceleration of design practice in global urban environments, where cultures, ideologies and manufacturing techniques are exchanged and feed into the on-going development of the arts, Urban Fabric is engaged thoroughly with the changing nature of materials available to designers and their uses. Showcasing international expertise in working with a range of metals, plastics, glass and ‘virtual elements’, the series aims to capture the constant evolution of design and how we shape the spaces around us; itself a nexus of such progress. 

As Choy herself puts it: 'What unites us, from the East to the West, are our experiences in today's built environment. If we examine contemporary urban settlements around the world, we find ourselves surrounded by similar materialities and elements.'

The pieces on display originate from a variety of Asian cultures; sparked from the influence of Choy’s curatorial vision on Gallery Collectional CEO and co-founder Cristiano Baccianti. Following a chance encounter at Milan’s Salone del Mobile, Choy worked to curate a series which went beyond stereotypical and narrow interpretations of so-called ‘Asian design’, to capture the wider breadth of what is being achieved by contemporary designers in the region. 

From Japan’s Kensaku Oshiro and his series of crystal furniture, to Singaporean textile artist Tiffany Loy’s hanging silk sculptures, Choy aimed to capture the work of a younger generation of artists, pursuing the development of modern design, without regressive conceptions from the past.

Fellow standouts from the show also include nods to promoting a sustainable design future, deploying unique interpretations of recycled materials and historical debris in a synthesis between the future of global cultures and their past. Choy calls particular attention to the work of Teo Yang, who uses materials from demolished Hanok buildings in Korea to form large sculptural works for interiors, alongside smaller pieces that combine the recycled elements with modern metals and glass, to seat his cultural heritage within a contemporary space. 

Likewise, the work by Kuo Duo, a design pair formed by artists Hwachan Lee and Yoomin Maeng, interprets new uses for Korea’s current plastic bag waste, forming furniture that could be used by future inhabitants.

Choy’s vision is ambitious, but nonetheless maintains a focus on sharing the practical solutions that innovative design can offer the world, alongside the development of the next generation of global artists and creators who can rise to its shifting challenges: 'If we agree that design is a tool for problem-solving, then we would agree that despite originating from different cultures and traditions, the problems and questions we face in modern society are universal, and thus designers are creating for a shared future.'

Urban Fabric is on view until 31 March 2024

Eden House, Jumeirah Garden City
41st St
Al Satwa
Dubai

thecollectional.com

It hardly seems possible that an island as bijou as Singapore could sustain so many top-notch restaurants, much less absorb the cavalcade of new openings each month. The latest to catch our eye is the freshly minted Jiak Kim House.

Set within an early 20th-century godown on the banks of the Singapore River, the restaurant is a head-turner, not least for its grand, high-ceiling interiors, which once stored rice, spices, coffee, tin and rubber – before it was converted in the 1990s into Zouk nightclub.

Jiak Kim House in Singapore: a soigné mix

Because the building, with its scallop-shaped roof pediment, is heritage-listed, local studio Dinding Design Office took pains to first shore up the foundations that rest on reclaimed swampland, and repair the extant brickwork and plaster before adding layers of handmade bricks, a marble bar counter, coconut-husk walls and customised rattan furniture. The original timber trusses have been left exposed to allow what Jimin Fadjar, Dinding’s lead designer, describes as the building’s ‘theatrical integrity’ to dominate.

Meanwhile, a wine vault featuring terracotta brick walls and a low arched ceiling lined in cork contrasts with a private dining room dressed with glossy blue wall panels, mustard gold upholstery, and wainscotting that nod to Singapore’s colonial past.

The result is a visually sophisticated and gastronomically soigné mix, the building’s storied past providing a soft palimpsest, especially as, in the kitchen, head chef and co-owner Seow Tzi Qin nimbly mines Southeast Asian recipes to reimagine classic flavours for millennial palates.

And so, the evergreen pork bone and pepper broth, bak kut teh, is transformed into a mushroom consommé spiked with herbs and green peppercorn foam. The Gallic standard, pan-fried foie gras, is reinvented with gula Jawa ginger caramel and a rambutan and grapefruit chutney, whilst the beloved Teochew rice dish, Pao fan, is given a modern burnish with pan-roasted Hokkaido scallops perfumed with Angelica root dash, cordyceps and ikura.

The desserts are no less inventive, Seow folding in buah keluak pulp with namelaka cream and kirsch-soaked cherries for his rendition of the Black Forest cake – and infusing sorbet with Maotai and pineapple, paired with coconut jelly crowned with lime meringue.

The post-prandial treats are headlined by a crackerjack cocktails menu including a liqueur of durian mixed with Pisco and a Filipino brandy warmed with spiced bitters and banana liqueur – though teetotallers may prefer to call it a night with Yunnan pu-er tea served up in Japanese cast iron pots.

jiakkimhouse.com

Ian Schrager’s global fleet of ever-expanding Editions shows no sign of slowing down. The hotel impresario, who turns 77 in July 2024, currently presides over 19 properties – from West Hollywood to Madrid and Shanghai – with at least three in the works – a none-too-shabby showing for a brand that only launched in 2010.

Set on the quieter western end of Singapore’s fabled retail strip, Orchard Road, the low-slung, 204-room pile, clad in bronze and glass, is the work of the Israeli architect Moshe Safdie and local studio DP Architects.

The Singapore Edition: grandiose but playful and big on biophilic design

As the hotel brand’s first property in South East Asia, expectations have always been high for The Singapore Edition, and on every metric, the hotel doesn’t disappoint.

In dressing the cavernous interiors, Hong Kong-based studio Cap Atelier cleaves close to the Edition’s ‘millennial-luxe’ playbook, with acres of white stone and Calacatta marble, a swathe of gold here and a splash of hot pink and Yves Klein blue there, and finishes the ensemble with dense greenery by way of biophilic walls and a glass-clad conservatory on the mezzanine floor, and a massive courtyard garden on the ground level.

If the public spaces are playful and grandiose in their scale and colours, the guest rooms are practically monastic in their blinding all-white minimalism. Not to forget mentioning the white rugs and hand-sewn damask throws, white oak floors, and white linen upholstery – surely a source of much sighing by housekeeping.

For restless guests, there are diversions aplenty, not least a small but perfectly curated gift shop and a mood-lit labyrinthine spa featuring thermal his-and-her plunge pools and ice fountains. Meanwhile, literally staking the high ground is an impressive 43m rooftop pool – a scaled-down facsimile of the Instagram-famous roofline at the Marina Bay Sands across town, which Safdie also designed – that links the Edition and its eponymous branded private residences.

And in a city where hotels stand or fall on the calibre of their food and beverage outlets, the Singapore Edition more than holds its own with a clutch of smart eateries and bars, including Fysh, the Australian chef Josh Niland’s first overseas outpost – a grand high-ceilinged dining room furnished with green velvet banquettes, white marble tables, a green marbled bar, and a head-turning tapestry painting by British artist Christian Furr.

editionhotels.com

Finding Araya inside the Mondrian Singapore Duxton is a bit like playing a round of ‘Where’s Wally?’, its entrance hidden away in a blink-and-miss-it corner of the ground level and its accessibility further complicated by a none-too-obvious doorbell on the side of the heavy, locked, dark timber door. But like the remote, picturesque Aconcagua Valley in central Chile where owners and head chefs Francisco Araya and Fernanda Guerrero were born, the effort is amply justified by the destination.

Emma Maxwell designs Araya, at Mondrian Singapore Duxton

Similarly to its neighbouring restaurant, the Kengo Kuma-designed Suzuki Omakase, Araya delivers an intimate dining room designed by the Australia-born, Singapore-based designer Emma Maxwell.

Deftly mining stints in the kitchens of elBulli, Mugaritz and Alegre, Araya and Guerrero’s multi-course dinner menu is a quietly confident fusion of the colours, textures, ingredients and flavours of their native Chile, as well as the Arabic and Japanese diaspora in South America.

To whit, a remarkable ceviche of scallops cured with shio koji and paired with a milk sorbet of ginger and green apples; tender slivers of smoked Pyrenees pigeon scented with aged Ecuadorean cacao; and tiny empanadas stuffed with wagyu.

The dream-like quality of the dining experience equally matches Maxwell’s interiors – a bravura homage to Chile’s landscapes, the colours evoking its sunsets and its southern mountain ranges in which Araya and Guerreros made many road trips in their youth.

And if there is a hero moment in the dining room to match the menu, it is the dining counter and chef’s prep bench, created by Maxwell out of a monolithic slab of rose quartz. This one runs along the entire room’s length and showcases luminosity and hues inspired by the topography of the Atacama desert.

‘Briefs are always great when they come from chefs who have passion and soul,’ she says, explaining her use of blue granite and black marble, natural vegetable-dyed Italian leather on chairs, hand-beaten copper finishes on doors, and bronze hardware to tell the stories of Araya and Guerrero’s memories.

‘For a long time now, we’ve wanted to open our own restaurant together,’ the chefs say, ‘a space where we can share the flavours from our part of the world with diners. Singapore’s dining scene has always been one of the most culturally diverse in the world, and we’re happy to work in a community that embraces new cuisines and traditions.’

arayarestaurant.com

Singapore’s art fair season took a hit when its tentpole event Art Stage was shuttered in 2019. But as with nature, it didn’t take long for the vacuum to be filled, and Art SG debuted in 2023, billing itself as Southeast Asia’s biggest international art fair. 

It says something about Art SG’s ambition that in only the second year of the event, held again in the cavernous exhibition halls of the Marina Bay Sands, its curators have managed to notch an impressive line-up of both regional and global artists and galleries – there are more than 110 galleries from 33 countries, not least, Sullivan+Strumpf, Neugerriemschneider, Waddington Custot, DAG and Gagosian. 

Wendy Xu, White Cube’s Asia General Manager, says Art SG is an important meeting place for both existing and new clients from Southeast Asia, adding that ‘Singapore is also the gateway to reaching many clients from North Asia, including China and Korea, who spend time here over the Lunar New Year period due to the warmer weather’.

The Art SG 2024 programme is a sweeping canvas that gathers ten young galleries that are under ten years old (watch out for Lisbon’s Artemis Gallery, and Bangkok’s Warin Lab Contemporary), and large-scale, site-specific installations (Gordon Cheung’s ghostly mixed-media installation of bamboo and newspaper, Home, 2024, is a mesmeric joy), alongside a film fest collaboration with the local ArtScience Museum, and talks focused on Southeast Asian contemporary culture in the context of the global art landscape. 

To be frank, it’s a lot to cram into three days, but happily, the Wallpaper* team scoured the fair during the vernissage, sorting through, and critiquing the best of the best before doors opened to the public. Herewith, our top picks. 

What to see at Art SG 2024

Journey Mercies: A Migration Symphony (2023), by Ken Nwadiogbu

The Global South, which encompasses both Africa and Asia, represents a rich tapestry of diverse cultures and artistic expressions, says Dolly Kola-Balogun, explaining how Ken Nwadiogbu’s solo show at Art SG is part of a broader push by her Nigerian-based gallery Retro Africa ‘to bridge cultural gaps, highlighting the shared experiences, narratives, and artistic nuances that connect us’. Ablaze with primary colours, Nwadiogbu’s abstract pieces are an intense meditation on the dynamism of migration.

Art SG Film

Held at the adjoining ArtScience Museum, this year’s satellite event examines the body – human and animal, physical and spiritual – through the lens of a coterie of 17 Asian artists and filmmakers. If you had to pick one film to watch, choose Korakrit Arunanondchai’s Songs for Dying (2021), a dreamy political elegy that threads together Thailand’s youth protests with the healing powers of a Korean shaman. 

This Constant Burning in the Air, by Matthieu Gafsou

Viewing art is an activity that’s always made so much more enjoyable if accompanied by a flute, or two, of champagne. At the Ruinart Art Lounge, bubbles form the figurative backdrop for Swiss photographer Matthieu Gafsou’s enquiry into the nexus between the Arcadian landscape of Champagne, and biodiversity and the environment. To drive home the point, some photographs are stained with crude oil to create the impression of the titular burning air.

Fossil Folly (group of 2) II (2023) by Mona Hatoum

London gallery White Cube shows up at this year’s Art SG, with works by a heavyweight roster of artists, among them, Tracey Emin’s Move Me (2015) neon installations, Andreas Gursky’s Dior Homme (2004) photograph, and Georg Baselitz’s Walla Walla (2020) bronze diptych. A highlight of the presentation is Mona Hatoum's Fossil Folly (group of 2) II (2023)’, a recent piece where old oil barrels leaking plants trenchantly questions the ecological impact of our oil dependency.

Amber Aura (2011) by Eng Tow

Eng Tow’s appearance at Art SG is a timely reminder of her importance in the pantheon of Singaporean artists, since the Royal College of Art alum came to prominence in the 1980s for her use of textiles as an art-making medium. ‘I’ve always been struck by the nuanced lyricism of her works even though they span a range of media from textiles to paper to sculpture,’ says Fost Gallery owner Stephanie Fong, who is presenting two of Tow’s works. 

Art SG takes place 19 – 21 January 2024

artsg.com 

The Artyzen Hospitality Group may have been founded in 2013 and its first property, the Artyzen Habitat Dongzhimen Beijing, launched in 2017; but in very short order, the brand now boasts thirteen hotels, two of which have just opened in Shanghai and Singapore, right on time to mark its tenth anniversary. 

By any yardstick, it’s a prodigious output, not least because of the group’s penchant for collaborating with blue-chip architects and designers. That, and the willingness of its owner, Pansy Ho, the formidable daughter of casino tycoon Stanley Ho, to support the expansion with seemingly endless injections of cash.

Artyzen New Bund 31 Shanghai and Artyzen Singapore

Artyzen New Bund 31 Shanghai, for instance, is a statuesque tower of shimmering glass and steel set in the New Bund 31 mixed-used development on the edge of the Huangpu River. Here, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office has dressed the high-ceilinged interiors of the public spaces, sweeping outdoor terraces, and 202 rooms in a palette of low-key mod-Chinoiserie by way of shades of blues and greys with copper hues and low-slung blonde timber furniture.

Incredibly, Artyzen New Bund 31 is the group’s eighth property in Shanghai, a city its senior VP, Peter Wynne, describes as the ‘launch pad to leading premium lifestyle experiences in the region’ – to wit, an ever-expanding fleet of serviced apartments, restaurants and bars, and conference centres. 

An equally potent sign of the group’s ambitions to be a bona fide heavyweight hospitality player is the debut of Artyzen Singapore, its first hotel outside China.

Located across the road from the newly minted Moshe Safdie-designed Edition Singapore, the 142-room property is a genuine crowdpleaser. Tapping into Singapore’s ongoing love affair with biophilic architecture, local studio Ong&Ong have created a low-rise pile that’s cut out with triple-volumed sky gardens, cool, shaded terraces, and a 25-metre long, rooftop infinity pool with sweeping views clear across Singapore’s north green belt and Malaysia in the hazy distance.

Inside, the Sydney-based interior designer Nic Graham has concocted a confection of mood-lit barrel-vaulted room sets that he’s furnished with Straits Settlement motifs, woven wicker, and dramatic, high-arched doorways inset with mirrors and draped with huge baskets of ferns and tropical greens.

For Artyzen, the two new Shanghai and Singapore hotels – which it’s marketing as ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ – are part of a larger goal to lock in the 1.8bn-strong Millennial and Gen Z sectors of the hospitality market. ‘They’ve always been our focus,’ says Wynne unapologetically, ‘and we see Artyzen Singapore as a launch pad to expand our presence into South East Asia.’

For now, Artyzen is keeping its expansion strategy close to its chest, but a to-do list that includes at least five new hotels in the next ten years is not too far-fetched, Wynne already on record that he’d like to see an Artyzen hotel in a key European city such as London or Lisbon.

artyzen.com

Singapore cocktail bars are arguably the city-state’s greatest international talking point at the moment, thanks in part to its recent hosting of the annual World’s 50 Best Bars awards, in October 2023. The event, which had been held exclusively in London until 2022 (when Barcelona was chosen as the first alternative host city), marks a coming together of the brightest, most creative minds in cocktails, showcasing excellence across the bar world, from the most prestigious hotel outlets to highly innovative speakeasies and dive bars. 

The awards began in earnest some 15 years ago, and Singapore ranks at number four (just behind Paris, New York and London) for the most number of entries on the hallowed list – with 18 different bars gracing the top 50 in that time. 

‘Singapore has a uniquely vibrant bar scene and proved a natural choice as the host location,’ says William Drew, director of content for the World’s 50 Best group. ‘Asia has been a stronghold of hospitality excellence, and we felt it was the perfect opportunity to shine a spotlight on the region's incredible contributions.’

Discover the best Singapore cocktail bars

Jigger & Pony

Jigger & Pony, placing at no.14 in the World’s 50 Best Bars list, has consistently ranked for the past five years. It’s one of the original game changers in the Singapore bar scene, having opened in 2012, and provides cocktail aficionados with a flawless reimagining of the classics, alongside an innovative ‘Identity’ menu, which looks back introspectively over the bar’s most celebrated creations. The attention to detail, service and focus on sustainability and zero waste – especially in Ugly Tomatoes, a drink combining B-grade beef tomatoes deemed too ugly for sale, Himalayan gin and homemade kummel, a caraway-based liqueur – highlights why the bar is likely to be a leading light for many years to come.   

jiggerandpony.com

Atlas

Arguably one of the most stunning-looking bars in the world, Atlas (no.48) is a vast art deco palace to all things gin. The high ceilings and gilded features instantly conjure up images of the beautiful ballrooms of Gatsby-era America. Behind the immaculate bar is a gin tower, rising up like a monolithic tribute to Mother’s Ruin, where you’ll find over 1,000 different gins from all around the world. 

atlasbar.sg

Native

By way of a visual contrast, head down to the traditional three-storey Shophouse buildings on Amoy Street and you’ll find Native, which has truly mastered the concept of doing everything as locally as possible – producing some stunning results. With a menu comprising just seven drinks, each one delivers a compelling story, using a curated selection of spirits from the Asia region (think Indian whisky, coconut distillates and Ceylon arrak). The serves are as tasty as they are ingenious: ask for a Peranakan and you’ll receive a heady blend of jackfruit rum, laksa leaves, goat milk, candlenut and gula melaka –  a palm sugar made from coconut flower buds.  

tribenative.com

28 Hong Kong Street

The penchant for speakeasy-themed bars is a clearly defined trend in Singapore and one which was definitely bucked by 28 Hong Kong Street when it first opened, back in 2011. Taking a seemingly nondescript city location (I guarantee you won’t spot it as you drive by in a taxi) and turning on the liquid wow factor behind its closed doors has paid dividends and the bar has gained an avid international reputation for its mix of innovative flair and beautifully crafted old-time classics. Add in its highly moreish bar snacks and you have a recipe for a true destination bar.

28hks.com

Analogue Initiative

One of the undoubted rising stars among Singapore cocktail bars has to be Analogue Initiative, housed in the traditional, imposing gothic surroundings of Chijmes, a former place of worship, now an upmarket complex of independent hospitality outlets. Analogue is immediately striking thanks to its incredible circular bar, which takes over the entire centre of the venue. Its wave-like appearance also carries an important message about sustainability: it’s completely 3D-printed using 1,600 tonnes of waste plastic, all taken from the ocean. The sustainability measures are also deeply entrenched in the drinks menu, especially its cheekily titled Faux Espresso, which uses hickory and dandelion root as alternatives to coffee –  a crop which is far more intensively farmed than most of us care to realise. 

analogueinitiative.com

Mr Stork

Finally, for an unrivalled overview of Singapore, you’ll be hard pressed to beat Mr Stork, the open-air rooftop bar at the Andaz hotel on Fraser Street, which brings a sense of how far Singapore has come as a world-class foodie destination, with its breathtaking 360-degree views of the vibrant city below and its dreamy, refreshing highballs and shrub-style cocktails, including the Simha Pura, which mixes Singapore micro distillery Tanglin’s Black Powder gin, fresh raspberry, vanilla, strawberry shrub, lemon juice and aromatic bitters.

hyatt.com 

As Mandarin Oriental Singapore reopens its doors, it forms part of an iconic seaside context – when it comes to cityscapes, there are few as recognisable as Marina Bay, the downtown area built on 360 hectares of reclaimed land. Today the district is defined by striking silhouettes such as the Moshe Safdie-designed Marina Bay Sands, its three 194m sloping towers dramatically linked at the top by the expansive SkyPark, the Lotus-inspired ArtScience museum – also designed by Safdie – and the Esplanade Theatres, nicknamed the ‘durian’ buildings for their resemblance to the fruit’s curved, spiky outer shell.

Mandarin Oriental Singapore: the history

But back in the 1980s, it was late American architect John Portman who first set the bar with his neo-futuristic designs for Marina Mandarin (now Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay) and Mandarin Oriental, both of which share no-frills concrete exteriors and signature, soaring light-filled atriums inside. 

For the latter, Portman celebrated the Mandarin Oriental group’s fan logo by creating a central court using the shape of a quadrant of a circle with a sizable base that gently tapers inwards towards the ceiling.

Now, as part of the hotel’s six-month overhaul by Kuala Lumpur-based practice DesignWilkes,  this iconic atrium has been appropriately highlighted with the designers cladding it in clay – a reference to Singapore’s roof tiles – that lightens in a gradient effect as it climbs higher. 'Singapore was the main source of inspiration for my design,’ explains Jeffrey A Wilkes, the firm’s principal. 'I wanted to use colours, textures and a sense of the tropics.’

Indeed, in following the brief to ‘rejuvenate, refresh, and create spaces for socialising’, Wilkes has transformed the hotel into an explosion of colour, florals and greenery that nods to the hotel’s tropical location.

The lobby is now a lively gathering spot, home to the vibrant Mandarin Cake Shop with a playful pastel palette that mirrors the sweet treats on offer, while behind the reception desk, a specially commissioned mural, by artists Keng Wai Lee and Marco Araldi, pays homage to the Nyonya and Baba heritage with its fresh use of colours representing tropical flowers and greenery.

Elsewhere, the hotel’s plethora of drinking and dining spaces have also been refreshed. This includes Embu, the international all-day restaurant, which takes its cues from the Tembusu (one of Singapore’s heritage trees) with stylised timber frames that reference the tree’s distinct perpendicular branching.

In MO Bar, cocktails such as ‘Reclaimed Slings’ – a futuristic version of the classic cocktail synonymous with Singapore – are served in a cosy low-lit dark blue and ruby red space that Wilkes layered with rich velvets, leathers and linen alongside retro lamps and colonial cabinets.

Meanwhile, the hotel has smartly teamed up with Mandala Club, a local private members’ club, to curate its executive lounge. Accessible to members of Mandala, the rejuvenated space is now a floral oasis in shades of green, with a dedicated wine cellar and a library.

The hotel’s newly embraced colour scheme is most evident in each of the guest rooms, with each category a different shade that represents Singapore. The Marina Bay View Room, for example, is revealed through blue tones inspired by the dappled steely blue waters of the bay, while the magenta suites take their cues from the orchid, Singapore’s national flower.

These colours serve as a base for floor-to-ceiling windows that frame those iconic views, as well as thoughtful details such as dappled batik patterns, chinoiserie branches climbing the walls, and palm shadows underfoot. ‘The Mandarin Oriental brand is an elegant balance of contemporary sophistication and a sense of belonging,’ says Wilkes. ‘We did not shy away from our tropical location, we embraced it with colour, with florals, with greenery.’

mandarinoriental.com

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Singapore Design Week 2023 kicked off with a conversation about the future of the island nation in light of a changing climate and an ageing population. Headquartered in the National Design Center, the event also saw exhibitions pop up across the city: from the central Bras Basah Bugis arts district to the convention centre at Marina Bay Sands, which hosted FIND, Design Fair Asia’s yearly convention. 

This year’s theme, ‘Better By Design’, posed the question to participants: how do we design for a better future? The answers were copious, ranging from large-scale initiatives aimed at combatting global issues to small domestic fixes envisioned to improve the day-to-day lives of vulnerable communities. 

Here are our highlights from Singapore Design Week 2023.

Singapore Design Week 2023

School of Tomorrow

The conversation around climate change and global warming is usually presented against a backdrop of unrelenting doom. But the ‘School of Tomorrow’ exhibition, organised by creative agency Kinetic Singapore, took a more playful approach to environmental education. Designed to resemble a primary school, complete with docents decked out in matching uniforms, the showcase presented its argument for reducing global consumption in a thoroughly engaging way. 

Set over three floors, each section was organised like a standalone classroom. The exhibition began with a biology class complete with neat rows of desks that displayed new research into bioplastics, including novel compositions made of algae and expired rice. Later on in ‘math class’, visitors were encouraged to tally up their carbon footprint with a responsive questionnaire that asked questions such as how often and how far they flew and whether or not they bought their groceries locally, allowing them to see first-hand the environmental impact of their daily choices.

FI&LD

Ong Ker Shing and Joshua Comaroff of Lekker Architects transformed the atrium of Singapore’s Lasalle College into an interactive playing field showcasing a range of inclusive design solutions. 

Lekker Architects is best known internationally for its Hack Care project, a restyling of the products in Ikea’s iconic catalogue to accommodate those living with dementia. The projects displayed at FI&LD followed a similar ethos. Play-Play, for instance, is a novel take on schoolyard games, which, thanks to a dedicated app accessed by QR code, tailors games according to the players’ abilities, ensuring that all participants engage on a level playing field no matter their needs.

Playground of Possibilities

Designer Jackson Tan’s ‘Playground of Possibilities’ exhibition told the story of 12 different projects that propose creative solutions to Singapore’s civic problems. Ideas dealt with everything from environmental issues to early childhood education, all set within brightly coloured pavilions, with many featuring child-friendly interactive displays. 

A section titled ‘Wardobe 01: Suiting Up Whee Boon’ by inclusive fashion brand Will & Well prompted visitors to try out the magnetic snaps on a floral patterned men’s shirt. The shirt had been designed specially for a Singaporean man called Whee Boon, who had lost his limbs to a bacterial infection. The new closures were designed to afford him the dignity of dressing himself independently while meeting his desire for a functional and stylish wardrobe – an apt illustration of the deceptively simple ways designers can accommodate such varying requirements.

Future Impact: Homecoming Showcase

First staged during Milan Design Week in April 2023, Future Impact made its homecoming debut during Singapore Design Week. Curated by Wallpaper* Milan editor Maria Cristina Didero and Tony Chambers, the show brought together six Singaporean practitioners whose work pushes the boundaries of fabrication, sustainable production and creative problem-solving. 

Projects included Nathan Yong’s ‘Bent Onyx’, which utilises new technology to precisely bend the infamously fragile coloured stone into functional, sculptural furniture, and Tiffany Loy’s ‘Building Futures Line by Line’ project, a series of colourful fabric sculptures that are the product of research into textile production using 3D printing technology in collaboration with Singapore University of Technology.

Emerge

The Emerge showcase proved to be a highlight of FIND, the yearly furniture fair held at Marina Bay Sands during Singapore Design Week. The exhibition thrust young and up-and-coming Southeast Asian designers into the international spotlight, displaying the broad range of talent in the region. Following the theme ‘Craft + Industry: Man + Machine’, over 50 designers showed work that ranged from handmade, artisanal objects to furniture produced with experimental fabrication techniques.  

Highlights from the showcase included textile panels by Jakarta-based Threadapeutic, which uses offcut and deadstock fabric to create wall-sized tapestries depicting tranquil landscapes. While Bangkok’s Kitt.Ta.Khon made use of recycled plastic threads to create looping, woven patterns in the sail-like backrest of a throne-style seat. Working with recycled tarp, the very type used daily in local Singaporean markets, designer Wei Xiang Tan produced a simple, aluminium frame chair that highlighted the colourful patterns of the found material. 

Another notable project came from Ho Chi Minh City’s Phồng Thiện Thu Mỹ, who utilises leather made from kombucha (which she produces herself) to construct lantern-like hanging lamps, one of the many projects demonstrating the wealth of ingenuity coming from young designers in the region.

sdw.designsingapore.org

Kengo Kuma has made his long-awaited Singaporean debut with Suzuki – a sushi bar, no less – and it’s a beauty. Located in a prime spot right by the entrance of the newly minted Mondrian on the edge of Chinatown, the bijou 22-seater is Kuma’s first commercial project in city-state, the Tokyo-based architect having previously designed some private residences there. 

Suzuki: a sushi bar by Kengo Kuma

First impressions count and Kuma sets the scene with a floor-to-ceiling glass façade clad in a bamboo collage that unfurls into a subliminal outline of waves. 

Inside, he has placed a small garden of Gifu rocks and pebbles anchored by a sōzu, or fountain, and a classic shishi-odoshi water spigot. The idea, he says, was to have a sushi restaurant set within a garden. ‘I wanted to have an element of nature within a small space. Even in Ginza, where all the good sushi places are located, it’s difficult to realise this kind of rock garden because real estate is so expensive. So in a way, this restaurant in Singapore is more authentic than most in Ginza.’

If the top notes of Kuma’s moodboard are stone and water, then his middle notes are washi paper, which clads the restaurant’s cupboards and the scrim for the private dining room, and bamboo, the latter harvested and cut in Kyoto, and then installed by local artisans on site. The long stems are found not just in the window façade but also in the dramatic ceiling above the open kitchen, their blond striations creating an almost cascading effect by drawing the eye up and then down towards the internal garden. 

The base note, and arguably the one that is designed to create the most lasting impression, is the L-shaped sushi counter, which is crafted from a solid piece of 150-year-old hinoki timber and lined with ‘NC’ chairs, which Kuma had designed for the café in Tokyo’s Nezu museum. Kuma was particularly insistent about using this wood, not least for its special connection to sushi bars. ‘It has a subtle perfume that creates a special harmony with fish. Most sushi bars, even those in Japan, don’t use hinoki, which I always find so disappointing.’

All of which is to say that a meal at Suzuki is a multi-sensorial experience, with head chef Suzuki Yuichiro gently teasing out seasonal flavours of seafood flown in four times a week from Japan – sea urchins from Hokkaido, tuna from Kyushu, and silver belt from Osaka – which he pairs with dashi stock made from freshly sliced bonito and water from Mount Fuji. Yes, really.

For Kuma – currently at work on the monumental Founders’ Memorial on Singapore’s Marina Bay – Suzuki is the synthesis of a life’s work in which simplicity is perfectly balanced with materiality. ‘I’m very pleased I was able to showcase Japanese culture within a very small space.’

kkaa.co.jp 

suzukiomakase.com

What kind of influence can design and new technologies have on our daily lives? The exhibition ‘Future Impact’ (held during Milan Design Week 2023) offers an answer to this question by showcasing six new works by Singaporean designers, supported by the DesignSingapore Council.

‘It is true that we are now talking about sustainability a lot, but I think we have to stop talking and really do something,’ says Maria Cristina Didero, who curated the exhibition alongside Tony Chambers. ‘We selected six designers working with new technologies, spanning from AI to 3D printing. Singapore is one of Asia's most advanced hubs for developing design innovation, and the six projects are very different from one another.’ 

Because Milan Design Week exhibitions are frequently visited by the general public, not just experts and enthusiasts in the field, Didero emphasises that ‘Future Impact’ was an opportunity to present Singapore as a design-led hub of innovation and creativity, where impactful design solutions and technology are capable of addressing the urgent need for sustainability in design and production today.

Future Impact: six Singaporean designers exploring new technologies

Presented in an exhibition design by Milanese practice DWA, all projects invited reflection. In the first room, Forest & Whale presented ‘Wallflower’, an interactive wall poster composed of multicoloured tesserae embedded with seeds that can be torn off, planted and grown into herbs. Each colour from the poster represents a particular herb, making it easy to trace the types of herbs one has planted over time.

‘We all want to use fresh herbs for cooking,’ says Gustavo Maggio, from the design duo. ‘But they come with a lot of plastic and go bad after two days. We thought that a visual reminder would make it easier for all of us to plant regularly.’ Also, he explains, traditional seed papers only have one variety of seeds: ‘Our innovation is that we have nine different types of seeds arranged in a very specific manner to give this unique pattern and offering the users the possibility to choose which plant they want to grow.’

In a second room, Nathan Yong, a multidisciplinary designer, presented ‘Bent Onyx’, delicate and precisely polished interior objects, some of which were shaped as decorative shelves. Onyx is one of the most fragile and brittle natural stones, and Yong employs a patented technology that reduces the excess waste produced during the manufacturing process. 

Next to this project, for her ‘Building Futures Line by Line’, textile designer Tiffany Loy teamed up with Singapore University of Technology and Design’s Digital Manufacturing and Design Centre to explore advanced automated textile construction, in particular approaching the construction of multi-material, pliable 3D forms, filling a gap in the current world of 3D printing.

The final room brought together the work of Viewport Studio, Gabriel Tan, and Studio Juju. Gabriel Tan, who now lives in Porto (and also showed a debut collection for B&B Italia in Milan), drew inspiration for his ‘Aiming for Peace: The Carnation Lamp’ from Portugal's Carnation Revolution, when flowers were offered by civilians to the rebel soldiers in a peaceful civil resistance. Aside from a low-energy 2.5W LED source, the lamp is made of an ash wood base from furniture production offcuts, a recycled steel pipe stem, and a 3D-printed lampshade made of recycled plastic. And, according to Tan, it is not only sustainable, but also aspires to be a symbol of nonviolence and harmony despite the current global situation.

Constructed entirely from Dekton – a sophisticated, high-performance, ultracompact stone slab material that has achieved carbon neutrality for its entire life cycle, ‘OO Collection’, designed by Studio Juju, is a collection of five sculptural and imaginative objects characterised by circular holes.

Viewport Studio produced ‘Rinnovare’, two sculptural room divider screens made from waste metal parts from its ongoing collaboration with Italian manufacturer Equilibri. It all started with the Viewport Studio-designed ‘Adapt’ chair for the Italian brand Equilibri, whose tubular steel folds are defined by stacking requirements. ‘Viewport-Studio began with a scrap of the leg to develop sculptural room divider screens that can also be used as a hanger or something else,’ Equilibri's Daniele Grobberio explains. 

The studio created two seemingly indistinguishable prototypes: one was created through direct conversations with the manufacturer, while the other was created through conversations with an AI (Chat GPT). The difference, the studio underlines, is that with AI, the outcome is defined from the start, whereas human work can be changed along the way.

designsingapore.org

Upon entering Ian Chee’s Singapore apartment in Tiong Bahru, an area known for its listed art deco buildings, you experience a tremendous sense of dislocation. The first impulse is to pause at the door, and then step back outside to check your sense of depth and perception, for it hardly seems possible that the relatively nondescript frontage – a white low-rise apartment block built, like the rest of the neighbourhood, in the mid-1930s by the Singapore Improvement Trust as a test case for public housing – could contain such a vast and, well, completely unexpected interior. This must be what it’s like to step into the Tardis. 

A Singapore apartment with a sense of history

When Chee was apartment hunting a few years ago, the Architectural Association-trained architect found himself drawn to Tiong Bahru as much for its dominant architectural style as for the proportions of the interiors, with their spacious rooms and high ceilings. ‘I was downsizing as I was spending more time in Bali, so I had a few criteria. The possibility of a garden courtyard was key and I also needed to be able to fit in my Steinway,’ he says. ‘I saw quite a few apartments, and they were all very different in size due to the uneven terrain.’

The 145 sq m ground floor apartment he eventually settled on ticked all the boxes, though there were a number of hurdles to overcome first, not least of which was to strip the space down to its bones. ‘The apartment was privatised in the late 1960s and the alterations dated from that period, with different mosaic flooring on different levels,’ Chee remembers. ‘Not much from the original building remained. Even the windows had been changed.’

He streamlined the spaces by bringing down most of the walls, reduced the original three bedrooms to two, reinstated the old-style panel windows, added another bathroom, and shifted the kitchen to the front. What had been a closed-up warren of rooms now expanded – almost like an exhale – into a long open space, with a clear line of vision from the kitchen straight through to the back of the apartment where Chee had set his bedroom.

The design was quite simple, Chee says, adding ‘the challenges were mostly mechanical and plumbing issues, which we resolved with the engineers. Materials, technology and living habits have also changed and these needed to be addressed. We tried to respect the feel of the old buildings from the time they were designed.’

The apartment, now free of six decades of haphazard accretions and benign neglect, is, despite Chee’s protests, a study in balance and proportion, every piece of furniture and decoration picked from a large trousseau accumulated from his family and his years living in London. What was not earmarked for his home in Bali would remain in the newly renovated apartment in Singapore. ‘I had to select things, as all my collected life could not have fitted into this space.’ 

The living room is held together with a mix of family history and a classical taste. The sofa and ottoman are vintage Isamu Noguchi, which Chee bought when he first got to London in the late 1980s, and the vintage Arne Jacobsen ‘Swan’ chair is reupholstered in a sports shoe fabric. The 1950s Heal’s dining table is from Lots Road Auctions in London, while the dining chairs are prototypes designed by his studio in Bali. 

Chee describes the artwork selection as a mixed bag: a wall hanging by Mulyana here, and an elongated statue of a boy by Lee Hwan-Kwon there, alongside a sculpture of a dog by local artist David Chan, lime wood reliefs made by his friend and sculptor Guy Reid, and handsome calligraphy scrolls inherited from his grandfather.

The effect is sophisticated, but it is also layered with a cosy, natural warmth – a visual treat that embraces the palimpsest of the apartment’s history and Chee’s life, as much as it is firmly anchored in modernity. And in that sense, though everything in this apartment is clearly the result of deliberation and a restless eye, nothing ever feels forced. 

‘I think I have succeeded in creating a space that I am very comfortable with in terms of light and ventilation,’ says Chee. On that note, the apartment’s bravura moment is the bijou courtyard garden – festooned with split leaf philodendron, polka dot begonia, pandan, turmeric and rau ram (Vietnamese coriander) – which Chee has made the focal point for the entire apartment by replacing the walls on either side of it with floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. Soft light falls through the open void to fill his lounge, bedroom and guest room, privacy from the neighbours upstairs achieved by judiciously placed overhangs. ‘This courtyard is a joy to my senses,’ he says. 

In many ways, Chee’s Tiong Bahru apartment perfectly embodies his own approach to architecture. Old buildings, he insists, should be retained on their merit. ‘But they should not be pickled unless they have architectural or cultural value. I personally love Hong Kong and London for that reason. Those cities have modernised without losing their old characters. The juxtaposition of old and new is, for me, one’s cultural baggage and identity.’  

vxdesign.com 

This article appears in the April 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The considerate, futureproof architecture of multigenerational homes celebrates living alongside grandparents and children. It is especially fitting to explore during the holidays, as, recently across Asia, family spirit was being commemorated during Lunar New Year, with reunion dinners that spur the largest annual travel rush in the world. Our growing need for deeper connections with relatives, along with rising costs of housing, childcare, and elderly care, has prompted architects to explore spatial configurations and living arrangements to fit the needs of three or more generations. 

Often, the most sustainable intergenerational houses are designed to be inclusive for all members of the family, accommodating access throughout the various stages of life. Many studios play with the balance of togetherness and privacy, creating smooth corridors of transition between communal areas and secluded bedrooms. 

From India to China, Singapore to South Korea, the tradition of multigenerational living is conserved and developed through projects like the ones below. The unique gathering spaces of a home reveal the heart and soul of a family, with the following examples having been tailored to meet the distinct wishes and tastes of different households. 

THE BEST MULTIGENERATIONAL HOMES

Jalan Chengkek, Singapore, by alittlepractice

Clad in reclaimed bricks and cooled by tropical air passing through a central courtyard, Jalan Chengkek provides a humble sense of respite for a growing family. The home was designed to be 'elderly-friendly and able to accommodate both sides of grandparents and children', say Alittlepractice architects Low Ming Fang and Lin Huiying. The open living areas let the grandparents easily keep watch over their young granddaughter as she wanders and plays independently around the house.

Residence of Three Generations, Beijing, by MINORlab

The Residence of Three Generations was designed to be a house 'where people agree to disagree, meet and relate as a family, and naturally form strong emotional bonds'. Nestled in the outskirts of Beijing, this update of a childhood home respects the privacy of its family members with independent bedroom suites and fosters meaningful cross-generational interactions through its permeable courtyard and patios. 

Plain Ties, India, by Matharoo Associates

Challenging the design conventions of a living room, a circular central lounge with moveable concrete walls illuminated by an adjoining skylight is the highlight of Plain Ties, a minimalist home in the Gujarati port city of Surat. The physical, mental, and spiritual wellness of the family is strengthened by a meditation space, temple, and gym, and opportunities for ‘communal collision’ are created along the house’s curved concrete stairs. 

Bojeong Dong House, South Korea, by The System Lab

Acting as both fortress and sanctuary, this curvilinear home provides security and privacy to the extended family of three sisters. Designed by local architecture practice The System Lab and situated just outside of South Korea's capital city, Bojeong-dong House's thick, flowing concrete facade is a purposeful attempt at tranquil comfort for the women of the family. 

SN House, India, by Rajiv Saini

'Art has always been an inseparable part of all my projects,' says Mumbai-based designer Rajiv Saini. When Saini was commissioned to design a multigenerational home in New Delhi for a returning client, a dramatic juxtaposition of materials, textures, bespoke furnishings, and carefully positioned art was collaged in a home of two discrete but interconnected units. With a self-contained suite for each member of the family, SN House serves as an expansive and tasteful example of multigenerational living. 

The House of Remembrance, Singapore, by Neri & Hu

Set within the Singaporean cityscape, Shanghai-based design and architecture studio Neri & Hu has reinterpreted traditional communal living with an updated Chinese courtyard house or siheyuan. The family's collective memory is celebrated through the architecture of the residence; a memorial garden for the household’s late matriarch that is lush with local vegetation is sheltered and framed by the house's pitched roof. Accommodating three adults' needs, an extroverted ground level with swathes of glass and open-plan arrangements contrasts with an emphasis on privacy on the upper floor of this two-storey home. 

Shiyuan, China, by Days in Yard Studio

Modern Hutong house Shiyuan, by Chinese architects Days in YARD Studio, was designed with the vision of 'a yard as a meeting place.' Resting by two ancient temple clusters, this home combines traditional Chinese construction and contemporary Passivhaus design standards to create a versatile, spacious, and domestic, sustainable architecture space. This courtyard house’s fluid and permeable living areas are sufficiently open for chamber music, painting, film nights, and everything in between. 

WeWork Singapore, which opened in September 2022, is the latest flagship opening from the fast-growing co-working enterprise. First launched in New York in 2010, the company now has 800 rentable co-working office spaces worldwide, with a presence in every continent (if we omit the frozen land mass of Antarctica). 

WeWork Singapore's new inner-city spaces

The new site is set at 21 Collyer Quay, at the heart of Singapore's Central Business District and is the second largest WeWork space internationally. 

Aiming to create a flow between the interior and public spaces, the design incorporates details in artwork and greenery. At the community bar, a two-sided painting by Joanna Pang was commissioned to sit facing both the indoor space and the street, while a third-floor serenity and wellness area incorporates plants into its lobby, mediating transitions between work and relaxation. 

In creating the co-working spaces, the designers were on a mission to build a social hub and collaborative breeding ground for WeWork's members. Through thoughtful lighting placement and visual and spatial cues to alternate floors, the design for the building is open, allowing for ease of movement and the feel of a ‘vertical social village’. 

Lighting subtly directs users around the building, and towards visual focal points in artwork and Singaporean cultural references. A mural by Kristal Melson, Untitled Mural, references the ‘garden in the sky’ cityscape, and is echoed throughout, while refurbished antique Peranakan tiles line staircases, bringing new life to history and reflecting on regional heritage.

Commenting on the tone of the spaces, Franquibel Lima, VP and global head of design studios at WeWork, explained how the ‘design team blurs the line between hospitality and workspace, while striking a balance between functional, flexible and thoughtful design’. The offices provide for an array of professional lifestyles; quiet corners, dynamic collaborative spaces and focused work areas are all accessible to WeWork members, with a variety of rentable areas of different scales and flexibility. 

wework.com

While the earlier work of Cao Fei is inextricably linked to her homeland of China, Singapore has come to play an important role in her recent output, particularly in Isle of Instability, 2020, a meditation on the meaning of home, produced during ten months of lockdown in the city state with her children and husband, the Singaporean conceptual artist Lim Tzay Chuen. It was Lim who introduced Cao to Singapore laksa: ‘He took me to eat laksa for the first time and I fell in love,’ she recalls. ‘It’s sweet, salty, spicy, fishy and fresh. It looks like a stunning, flowing Jackson Pollock work, white and red pigments hedging against each other.’

Cao Fei’s recipe for Singapore laksa (serves 2)

From Tasty.co, presented by VisitSingapore

8 king prawns
4 tbsp cooking oil
480ml chicken stock
1 tbsp palm sugar
1 tbsp fish sauce
400ml coconut milk
100g tofu puffs
200g vermicelli rice noodles, cooked
100g beansprouts, blanched
1 fish cake, sliced and heated
8 cockles
1 bunch laksa leaves
2 tbsp chilli paste (optional)

Laksa paste

15 dried chillies
2 red chillies
3 tbsp dried shrimp, soaked
1 tsp shrimp paste
8 garlic cloves, peeled
1 shallot, peeled
2.5cm piece ginger, peeled 
2.5cm piece galangal, peeled 
5cm piece turmeric root, peeled
30g candlenuts
1 lemongrass stalk, peeled
 
Remove the heads and shells from the prawns and place them in a bowl. Devein the prawn meat and place in a separate bowl. Add half the cooking oil to a large saucepan set over a medium-high heat. Add the prawn heads and shells, then stir for 5 minutes, crushing the heads to release the flavour. Add 1.2 litres water and the chicken stock, then simmer for 45 minutes allowing the stock to reduce. Remove the prawn shells, then strain the stock into a bowl through a sieve.
 
To make the laksa paste, put the chillies, dried shrimp, shrimp paste, garlic, shallot, ginger, galangal, turmeric root, candlenuts and lemongrass stalk in a food processor, then pulse for 5 minutes until a thick paste forms. Add the remaining cooking oil to a large saucepan, then add the laksa paste and cook for 5 minutes until fragrant. Add the palm sugar, fish sauce, coconut milk and prawn stock, stirring to combine. Simmer the mixture for 15 minutes, then add the prawns and tofu puffs, cooking for 3 minutes to finish.
 
To serve, add vermicelli noodles to a bowl, then top with beansprouts, cockles and fish cake slices. Add laksa, including tofu puffs and prawns. Top with a handful of finely chopped laksa leaves and chilli paste, if desired.

INFORMATION

A version of this article was originally featured in the June 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, on newsstands now and available to subscribers.

caofei.com; spruethmagers.com

Julien Royer is descended from four generations of hardy French farmers and cooks. Which is why the Cantal-born, Singapore-based chef could not have picked a more perfect, bucolic spot to open Claudine – his sophomore restaurant – than the bijou, late 19th-century Ebenezer Chapel in Dempsey Hill’s leafy grounds.

Dempsey Hill is a decommissioned colonial military barracks cosseted by tropical jungle, and the chapel had, over the years, served as a school for children of the British military and a place of worship (first for the then colony’s Roman Catholics and later the Presbyterians) before it was converted in 2007 into a restaurant.

Claudine: new Singapore restaurant designed by Nice Projects

In the midst of the pandemic, London-based interior designers Nice Projects orchestrated, mostly from afar, a tip-to-toe refurbishment of the chapel, stripping everything down to the original mosaic floor tiling, curlicued window grilles and the stone-cut holy water font. Cleaned up and repointed, these features now add a charming historical palimpsest to the restaurant, and, says Sacha Leong, Nice Project’s co-founder and project lead, ‘give a special sense of the character and context of the original architecture’.

To give the lofty space a more human scale, the studio dropped a white 15m-long cylindrical paper lantern by Santa & Cole from the rust-red ceiling and dressed the room with bespoke banquettes swathed in green velvet and sand-hued linen, and bistro chairs clad in vegetable-tanned leather. Wrapped around the restaurant are glass wall panels designed by local florists This Humid House to encase locally harvested dried pressed grass. ‘Our intention was to reference the greenery that surrounds the restaurant,’ says Leong.

This concern for the natural setting is reflected in the kitchen, where Royer and his executive chef Julien Mercier channel the nostalgic rustic flavour memories of Royer’s childhood in the countryside. 

And so, whilst Royer’s first restaurant Odette (winner of Best New Restaurant in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2017) – which, incidentally, Nice Projects is currently refurbishing – is a local byword for refined contemporary French cuisine, Claudine sends out zhooshed-up Franco country fare, such as a terrine of kurobuta, an intensely flavoured Cevennes onion soup paired with Comte cheese toast, and a crisp shell of vol-au-vent stuffed with a fragrant stew of cockscomb, morel and sweetbreads.

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the April 2022 issue of Wallpaper*, on newsstands now and available to subscribers.

claudinerestaurant.com; niceprojects.work

Ask any architect and they’ll tell you that nostalgia can be a quiet but powerful palimpsest that informs every design decision – from the colour palette and furniture specified, even to the way light is directed to fall on a wall. And in this tranquil apartment interior design located in Singapore’s tony Nassim neighbourhood, memories of its owner’s years in New York are just below the surface. ‘She had just moved back to Singapore,’ recalls Robert Cheng, whose Singapore architecture firm Brewin Design Office was tapped for the renovation work.

‘She showed me images of apartments in uptown Manhattan and Tribeca-styled residential designs, many of which referenced the high quality joinery work that’s so common to North American interior design and fabrication.’

Cheng’s interventions in the ten-year-old property were surgically precise as he inserted a set of triple sliding doors in the foyer, each bijou canopied volume opening up to the other like a pyramid lined with green onyx marble columns – the procession unfurling finally into a lofty living room awash with light streaming in through the balcony, and a floating quality created by the low-slung furniture.

The American vibe, meanwhile, is quietly telegraphed by acres of American walnut, the material cladding every room and view, alongside golden Calacatta marble in the main bathroom, silk and linen wall fabrics, ivory stucco and white oak floors, and a small collection of bespoke furniture by Cheng’s studio.

Scattered through the rooms are chairs by Finn Juhl and Jorge Zalszupin, and spindle-backed furniture by Giuseppe Scapinelli. ‘Their proportions remind me of homes in uptown New York City and townhouse interior design,’ says Cheng, who reserves his grandest gesture for the dramatic, 9m-long, deeply set balcony by covering up the original lap-pool to create a foliaged oasis lined with greenery, handsome breeze-brick walls that sport a modern, stylised profile, and bleached teak flooring.

Cheng – an alumnus of Rhode Island School of Design, and Harvard – cut his teeth at Tsao & McKown in New York before apprenticing with Jean Nouvel in Paris. He is, in other words, no stranger to precision work, but even he was challenged by the bar he and his client had set as he pushed hard for ‘the local contractors to meet Western standards for the joinery detailing. The timber and stone in the bathrooms and foyer, for example, had such minute tolerances.’

The result, though, speaks for itself, the Nassim Park apartment fairly aglow, especially in the soft tropical evenings, in its facsimile of an artfully imagined Manhattan lair.

INFORMATION
brewindesignoffice.com

Physics loves a sphere, its preferred, purest form. For architects though, the box trumps the bubble. They’re easier to engineer and offer more useful space. The new Apple Marina Bay Sands store in Singapore goes with the physics. And, if not actually a complete sphere, it’s near enough to be considered a daring piece of architectural chutzpah.

Designed by Foster + Partners – the architects behind the Apple Park HQ building in Cupertino and many of the tech giant’s flagship stores – the new outlet appears to be a giant ball, floating if not bobbing in Marina Bay. The structure is actually a dome, 30 metres in diameter, 17 metres tall, made up of 114 glass panels and sitting on an existing concrete foundation.

‘It’s sort of an igloo,’ says Stefan Behling, Senior Executive Partner at Foster + Partners. ’It’s all structural glass with very thin, polished stainless steel ribs, which seem to dematerialise. And obviously no columns, which more or less goes without saying these days. You won’t find anything with a more delicate structure, probably in the world.’

Engineering the structure was tricky enough, but Foster + Partners spent as much time and effort engineering the experience it creates. ‘Let’s just say it’s a glass bubble,’ says Behling. ‘But if it was just that it would be too hot, too bright, too noisy. Not the right thing. The idea was that to come into a space was like living in a daylight light fitting.’

Crucial to the control and regulation of light inside the store, Apple’s third in Singapore, are a series of interior baffles, smaller versions of those on the exterior of Apple Park but doing a similar job. These triangular wedges are arranged into horizontal rings that get smaller as they progress up the sides of the dome and provide shade but also bounce light upwards. ‘You see the same effect at Apple Park,’ says Behling. ‘Light bounces off one baffle to the underside of the one above. And the effect is really astonishing.’

The effect within the Marina Bay store, continues Behling, is a natural, ‘magical diffused light’ that feels congruous with the diffused light common to Singapore. ‘We’ve been saying for years that the best way to see the product is actually to see outdoors.’ In fact, Behling hopes that being inside the store should feel like being outside, only better, given the air conditioning. (And, he admits, air conditioning was unavoidable. ‘I’m obsessed with natural ventilation but in this part of the world you just can’t do it.’)

The baffles, filled with foam and coated with fabric, serve another function; smoothing out what could have been disturbingly harsh acoustics. And the effects of the baffles on sound and light, as well as issues of larger structural soundness, were, says Behling, ‘obsessively modelled’ on computers and then tested with full-scale mockups.

Far simpler to model was the path of a disc of light created by a Pantheon-style semi-transparent three-metre-wide oculus at the top of the dome. ‘I can tell you exactly where that splodge of light will be at any time on any day of the year.’

The store’s diffused glow should be a pull, not just from the waterfront, connected to the store via a footbridge, but also from below. That underwater concrete foundation actually houses the store’s lower floor and links to an entrance within the Marina Bay Sands shopping mall.

Reaching the bubble from the basement requires two escalators and Foster + Partners have worked on making that journey as theatrical, in a controlled Apple way, as possible. ‘There is this really dramatic sequence,’ says Behling. ‘You come into quite a compressed store in the lower level, which has the display tables which feel familiar. But then you realise there’s a glow at the end. And you see these escalators which travel through a quite magical polished stainless steel tunnel which creates a crazy kaleidoscopic effect and then you enter this very spectacular space. It’s definitely not a store where you will say, “yeah, I’ve seen that before”.

And if a giant glass ball could come-off as extravagant and a little show-offy, it is intended to add something a little calmer to the cluttered and chaotic Singapore skyline. ‘We always say that with the stores we design from the inside out,’ says Behling. ‘That the most important thing is the product, people interacting with the product and making that a great moment. But there was also a huge responsibility here to be a new feature on the Singapore skyline. It’s a super pure shape but there’s an enormous amount of innovation and complexity involved.’

INFORMATION

Apple Marina Bay Sands opens on Thursday, 10 September 2020. Visits on opening day will be by appointment only, customers can visit apple.com/sg/marinabaysands to choose from available times

ADDRESS

2 Bayfront Avenue, B2-06, Singapore 018972

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Singapore studio ADDP Architects and Los Angeles based OWIU Design have revealed their joint winning competition entry for a pavilion, which will be the centrepiece of this year's Archifest event in Singapore this September. The two firms scooped the first prize to create a temporary flagship structure for the show, which is organised annually by the Singapore Institute of Architects; only this year, unsurprisingly, due to current events surrounding the pandemic, the Southeast Asian country's celebration of architecture and the built environment will take place in the digital realm. 

Responding to this, the winning team's concept drew on the ongoing global challenges and moulded its design to work with the format of virtual tours, ensuring the festival can still be accessible and present as ‘a platform to discuss, debate and dream about the possibilities surrounding architecture and the city of Singapore,' explain the organisers. 

‘The pavilion will test new architectural ideas for post-Covid-19 design from its total prefab construction to its spatial layout, sustainable wooden material composition, functional tectonic glass design and light manipulation,' say the designers. 

Entitled Reclaiming Connectivity, the structure features as its starting point OWIU Design Studio founding partner Amanda Gunawan’s photographic series on abstraction in the natural landscape. Blending these photographic prints on walls made of Light Emitting Surfaces glass, with spatial reflections on humanity’s innate need for connection, the design explores this yearning for togetherness that becomes even more prevalent in the current framework of international guidelines for social distancing. The designers propose creating private areas within public space as an alternative to isolation, illustrating their concept through timber, prefabricated arrangements within an open plan pavilion that offers glimpses of natural scenes. 

The pavilion, which is designed to be physically built within 48 hours using prefabrication methods and 99 per cent sustainable FSC-certified timber, is still planned to appear in its physical form next year in the Singapore City gallery; but for now, it will be available to visit virtually from 25 September 2020 through the Archifest website. 

INFORMATION

archifest.sg

addp.sg

owiu-design.com

For Bobby Cheng, the Singapore-based founder and lead architect at Brewin Design Office, dream projects tend to be the ones that allow him to ‘operate “end to end”, and to design the interior architecture, especially, right through to selecting artworks and creating bespoke furniture pieces for the project.’

His latest work – the 20-storey show suite in the new 20-unit Eden condominium designed by Thomas Heatherwick – fits the bill precisely.

Channeling the idea of a ‘home in a garden’, the 3,000 sq ft apartment is flanked by bulbous balcony pods, each festooned with thick tropical plants. Every view, as a result, is layered by a foreground of lush greenery.

‘We really wanted to show that interior design should be connected to the building envelope, to be contextual,’ says Cheng. To that end, the show suite’s non-linear interiors, a result of Heatherwick’s unusual spatial elevation, are set off by organic forms and natural materials.

Rattan, hemp and rough silk frame acres of timber panels, travertine and marble, alongside bespoke pieces created by a global Rolodex of artists and designers, including the Oregon-based sculptor Julian Watts, who contributed a striking wall piece carved from a single Mapletree trunk.

The low-slung profiles of light furnishings, many of which were custom designed by Cheng, allow the spaces to quietly expand, especially in the central living space where large bi-folding windows open up to connect interior with the green-fringed balconies and views beyond. ‘We took down pre-existing partition walls to add ventilation and light, and to create unobstructed views.’ 

For Cheng, a Harvard alum who cut his teeth at Tsao & McKown, and later at Atelier Jean Nouvel, Heatherwick’s work on Eden is unique for its sensitivity to nature and its quiet references to traditional colonial typologies. ‘It was important for us to create an interior that complimented his detailing but without replicating his language.’ We’re sold.

INFORMATION

brewindesignoffice.com 

Burnt Ends

Try as you might, recreating the smokey flavours of the dishes at Michelin-starred Burnt Ends on your home barbecue is just not going to happen. This might have to do with the fact that the restaurant's grilled delights are fired up in a huge four-tonne double-cavity custom-made oven, which owner and chef Dave Pynt says heats to almost 1,000 degrees celsius. So, save your barbecue for another day and order in the signature pulled-pork sandwich alongside some fancy sides like the smoked quail egg with caviar.

Dish to order: King crab and garlic brown butter

burntends.com.sg

Cheek Bistro

Sometimes all you want is the comfort of a well-executed classic. This craving can be satisfied by Cheek Bistro, the modern Australian restaurant that serves zhooshed up favourites from simple burrata with heirloom tomatoes and fermented green chilli to lamb ribs served with a side of eggplant, yoghurt and mint.

Dish to order: Fish n chips red snapper with green peas

cheekbistro.com

Le Bon Funk

Pair your glass of wine with some unconventional food from Le Bon Funk, an offbeat bistro best-known for its offering of natural wines. While the house-cured charcuterie is a no-brainer, it does pay to order dishes such as the beef tongue and gribiche sandwich or the cavatelli with tripe and 'nduja ragu. As for the wine, a bottle of the ridiculously drinkable Dosset Rosso wouldn't go amiss.

Dish to order: The whole heritage chicken

lebonfunk.com

Meatsmith Little India

The sister to the American barbecue restaurant, Meatsmith at Telok - which is also offering a takeaway menu – the Little India iteration offers the same smokey meat flavours, but with an Indian spin. And while you might not be able to dine in amongst its colourful street artwork for now, the good news is the dishes – from the stuffed tandoori chicken wings to sharing plates like the soft shell crab curry – taste just as good at home.

Dish to order: Suckling pig biryani

meatsmith.com.sg

Odette

Located in the National Gallery, Odette is arguably the finest of all fine dining restaurants in Singapore. And while visiting a three-Michelin star establishment is usually as much about the experience as it is about the food, chef Julien Royer has taken the unusual steps to offer a selection of his iconic and seasonal plates to enjoy at home. So set the table with your finest silverware, put on your Sunday best and order dishes like the Beetroot Collection served with burrata, honey and pomegranate or the Loire Valley white asparagus.

Dish to order: The whole roasted poularde de Bresse

odetterestaurant.com

OverEasy

The good thing about comfort food is that sometimes it does taste better when eating it perched on your sofa. So while dining in at OverEasy is off limits for now, the all-American diner is offering its nostalgic crowd-pleasing classics to enjoy at home. Make sure to order the To Die For burger and pair it with the decadent Oreo milkshake while you're at it.

Dish to order: Beer Can Chicken

overeasy.com.sg

Pó

The flagship restaurant in The Warehouse Hotel, Pó serves up elevated Singaporean favourites with a strong dose of nostalgia. From comforting classics such as paper spring chicken to carabinero prawns & konbu mee, this is your chance to enjoy a taste of home-cooking without having to do the dishes.

Dish to order: The popiah platter

po.com.sg

Pollen

While Pollen's unique setting, tucked away in the corner of the Flower Dome – a glass greenhouse at Gardens by the Bay – is not to be missed, the great thing about its comforting European menu is that its dishes can easily be enjoyed just about anywhere. Don't miss out on homey classics from  lasagne to cottage pie, followed by a selection of house-made cakes and tarts like the tiramisu or the lemon meringue pie.

Dish to order: Beef wellington 

pollen.com.sg

Salted & Hung

As its name suggests, it's all about meat at Salted & Hung. Cured, smoked, pickled or grilled, the modern Australian menu offers  everything and anything from skin to bone, protein to innards. Start with the house-cured charcuterie and a side of sourdough with whipped lard and kelp butter, followed by the 30-day dry aged rib eye. Or for a non-red meat option, the seafood risotto goes down a treat.

Dish to order: Wagyu pastrami sandwich with mustard and pickles

saltedandhung.com.sg

The pandemic has been something of an intellectual and emotional watershed for the Singapore-based designers I spoke to, just as it’s been for creatives around the world.

Certainly, old paradigms and business models have been fallen by the wayside, complicated by cancelled orders, embargoed suppliers and a consumer base too skittish to come too close to an atelier.

But, equally, there is a welcome sense of optimism mixed with an indomitable fearlessness, which manifests itself as a business-as-usual mindset and a determination to make do with what’s available.

When the pandemic struck, architect Charles Wee was working on the interiors of a regional airport terminal building. The ensuing shutdown now offers ‘some time for reflection, for review, and for rethinking some of the design decisions. Diversification is an adaptive response I am taking. I have been curating my photographs and posting them on social media platform such as Instagram, with the intent of sharing shots of the built environment from my perspective. I am hoping it can be a source of inspiration and perhaps lead to offering such services as well.’

While several of her projects are on hold, multimedia artist Dawn Ng spends her days ‘testing, researching and experimenting with materials which, to be honest, is where I derive the biggest joy. I’ve been inspired to work with aerial objects of late — shapes and forms that possess a lightness of being. Everything happens in the studio, with materials I have.’

For Elyn Wong, whose Stolen label made her the go-to fashion designer for ultra-feminine backless silhouettes, ‘the pandemic has definitely woken me up to what matters and what doesn’t for my business.’

Transparency and empathy are the bedrock of her response to the crisis. She shows actual numbers and revenues to her staff so that they feel accountable and invested. ‘I’m also making sure all our marketing efforts put people first, and not the business because we need to be very sensitive to the emotions of our clients and sound socially responsible and respectful. Especially since we are in fashion, which might be considered frivolous during such trying times.’

The paucity of materials has also hot-housed a great deal of digital content, even for creative consultants such as Clara Yee who, together with writers based in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, and developers in the US, has just completed ‘Kindness Contagion’, a graphic series to be published on social media, and online media platform B-Side.

‘We're a studio of introverts, so we're really comfortable with remote working and social distancing,’ Yee quips. ‘The biggest change is probably that we prioritise any call for support. It's unusual times and we have to support each other through it. When we get wind of a call for help, that goes on top of the stack first.’

This instinctive flight towards online interaction as a way to offer camaraderie, and deliver fresh business options, rings especially true for Olivia Lee. The industrial designer is working on visual merchandising and communication projects for clients pivoting towards messages of hope and optimism, and a new furniture collection. ‘I think the present mass digital transformation is forcing us to rethink launch, exhibition and retail models. At this point, it could go both ways. Virtual launches could supplant physical shows entirely. Conversely, a post-viral world could have us craving tactility and human interaction to the point that we congregate with a vengeance.’

For now though, that congregation lies very much in the future. As this piece is being written, Singapore is about to enter into a one-month lockdown, a move that will force its creatives to turn ever more inwards. And for many of them, this is not necessarily a bad thing. ‘I’ve come to appreciate the silence,’ says Dawn Ng. ‘The phone and inboxes have stopped pinging and I can hear the thoughts in my head with greater clarity.’

Read more from Wallpaper* World View

Letter from Milan
Letter from Melbourne
Letter from New York City
Letter from Paris
Letter from California

INFORMATION

@dawn___ng, dawn-ng.com
@stolenstolen, stolenstolen.com
@weareinthewild, weareinthewild.com
@visuallyolivialee, olivia-lee.com

‘When I design,’ says William Chan, founder and lead architect at the Singapore-based studio, Spacedge Designs, ‘I like to erase the previous layout and plan the new space based on the homeowner’s priorities.’

It’s an approach seen to best effect in this 47 sq m public housing flat in Singapore’s Bukit Batok neighbourhood, for which the client, a dyed-in-the-wool minimalist and LEGO afficionado, gave Chan free creative rein.

Given the size of the flat, Chan decided to pare down the interiors, replacing bedrooms and demarcations with a series of low maintenance, laminate cuboid cabinets that hide storage areas for kitchen, wardrobe, fridge and washing machine, while leaving functional spaces such as the shower and bed completely open.

‘I wanted a continuous and organised flow of a continuous open space with no obstructing walls and doors. Rather than having individual rooms, this was, I thought, the ideal solution for a single occupant in a small flat.’

The severity of the design is offset by surprising moments, such as a neon orange wall disc, a feng shui diktat; and a slender wall-to-wall blue metal light tube that doubles as an art installation. ‘I don’t design more than what is required and that, to me, reflects sustainable design.’

Chan’s greatest sleight of hand, though, is a bijou gallery, hidden behind a sliding cupboard and kitted out with backlit shelving, for the owner’s prized collection of Lego Architecture Series.

For Chan, who is currently working on a co-living project in Singapore and a hotel in China, this project has been a timely opportunity to challenge what he describes as the impersonality and rigidity of typical layouts, particularly in public housing flats.

‘Everything from the layout, design, and furniture to the lighting, homeware and artwork have been carefully assessed and curated, taking into account the owner’s specific needs in terms of his lifestyle and day-to-day use of the home.’

INFORMATION

spacedge.com

Forty years on from opening its first store, The Hour Glass business has expanded across Southeast Asia to Japan and Australia but more than that, the Singapore watch emporium has had an influence on the region’s tastes and buying habits that few stores could match.

The Hour Glass was an early champion of independent watchmakers such as Urwerk and de Bethune and became the first port of call for both collectors and emerging brands – too many to list, but NOMOS Glashütte and MB&F are just two that have made their debut in Singapore at The Hour Glass.

To mark the anniversary (and there’s no business more obsessed by them than the watch industry), Michael Tay, the group MD, worked with Sir David Adjaye and the watch auctioneer Aurel Bacs to put together a horological exhibition, ‘Then, Now and Beyond’.

Daniel Arsham, Marc Newson, Nendo, and Studio Wieki Somers have all created works for the exhibition which will be shown alongside specially commissioned watches from Audemars Piguet, Chopard, De Bethune, Franck Muller, MB&F, NOMOS Glashütte, Sinn, TAG Heuer, Urwerk and Ulysse Nardin.

It’s an eclectic mix, with Daniel Arsham re-interpreting the hourglass and Nendo’s Oki Sato showing a cuboid monolithic clock. Wallpaper* Handmade collaborators, Studio Wieki Somers, have produced the ‘Beetle Clock’, a proxy for the global decline in insect numbers and species.

Marc Newson, whose history in watch design goes back to the Nineties, has produced a thoroughly modern take on the klepsydra, the water-clock idea that dates back to the earliest known civilisations.

Milan-based design studio JoAnn Tan Studio, who specialise in window displays, installations, scenography and set design, were brought in to create a look and feel for the exhibition which will be at The Hour Glass’ Napoleonic-themed Malmaison concept store on Singapore’s Orchard Road in Singapore until the end of February

INFORMATION

thehourglass.com 

As grande dame hotels go, Raffles Singapore has enjoyed a remarkable run, but when it turned 130 in 2017, it was clear that even it was showing distinct signs of wear and tear – its last major facelift taking place back in 1991, a full epoch in a world measured in instant moments.

But now, after a two-and-a-half year shuttering during which a crack team – among them, architects Aedas, design consultants ICN Design International, lighting consultants Tino Kwan, and restoration and research consultants Studio Lapis – sliced and tucked, the hotel is now back in business.

The restoration programme of the all-suite hotel went beyond a simple refurbishment. Total keys have increased from 103 to 115 with every suite now fully juiced-up on electronic hardware. Formerly moribund spaces like the Writers Bar and the Raffles Grill have been completely reimagined as glossy cocoons of pastel hues, swathes of shimmering brass, and plush furnishings.

Most of the interiors were conceived by Alexandra Champalimaud, the New York-based designer’s light touch most evident in the suites which she has overhauled with four-poster beds, modern art, palm-patterned rugs, and judicious lashings of marble.

Equally pleasing is the roster of new tent-pole restaurants scattered through the hotel, among them soigné outposts by Alain Ducasse, Jereme Leung and Anne-Sophie Pic.

ADDRESS

1 Beach Road

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

For many Singaporeans, the history of their nation more or less began when the British East India Company, under the aegis of one Stamford Raffles, set up a trading post on the island in 1819. Timely then that organisers of the bicentennial have pushed the date marker back a further 500 years to explicitly include Singapore’s trading and political relationships with the Srivijaya, Majapahit and Ayutthaya empires.

The centerpiece of the celebrations and revised timeline is the Pathfinder, a series of eight pavilions and installations on Fort Canning – a thickly jungled hillock on the edge of Robertson Quay and the site of the first 14th-century royal palace. 

Constructed of thin white steel lattices, the pavilions were conceived by local studio Zarch Collaboratives to ‘de-museumify’ its contents of ancient artefacts and botanicals. The kinetic façade of the House of Maps, for instance, mimics wind-driven sails, a particularly effective semaphore for the maritime trade that has dominated this part of the world for the last 700 years.  

Given the lush park setting, says Zarch’s principal, Randy Chan, ‘our ambition was to create a lightweight and immaterial form that becomes one with its surroundings. Architecturally, this challenge involved the prototyping of materials and forms which could create transparency, but, which, at the same time, offer enclosed areas for the protection of artefacts from the weather.’

Following a survey of the old fort’s light conditions using scale models and 3D renderings, the studio settled on the lattice design which was then welded into a volumetric grid. ‘With no definitive edges, the pavilions appear almost translucent from afar, seamlessly merging within its green surroundings,’ says Chan, adding that mirrored acrylic panels further de-materialise the form through reflections of the park, whilst providing shelter.

INFORMATION

zarch.com.sg