Singapore Design Week: Playground of Possibilities

The Playground of Possibilities brought together 12 design projects from Singapore that tackle some of the most pressing challenges we face today with innovative solutions and inspiring provocations as the key showcase for Singapore Design Week 2023 at the National Design Centre. The exhibition presented an immersive playscape of four colourful landscapes—Explore, Empathise, Imagine and Adapt—with an array of experiential installations. Visitors were able to feel how building facades of tomorrow can naturally cool like the skin of an elephant, visit a “mini” public housing town designed to be dementia-friendly, meet a friendly robot who serves visitors while keeping them safe and play in a kitchen with “smart” ceramic tableware that responds to the human touch. Other installations explored ways to reinvent the gifting of flowers and fruits to be more sustainable, tailored a more inclusive fashion for persons with disabilities and worked with migrant workers to create a more welcoming dormitory room. There are also examples of how digital technologies are being harnessed to make learning more interactive and to improve public services. Finally, experiments with 3D-printing to customise medical prosthetics for better patient outcomes and even one that speculates on the future of design, were showcased as well.