Venice 2008 | The Singapore Pavilion

September 12th, 2008 • architectures, movingmemos

FARM is the curator of the Singapore Pavilion for Venice Architectural Biennale 2008, SUPERGARDEN. MovingCities’ Singaporean connection, founders of 5ft Creatives, and the people behind Five Foot Way, are the youngest participant from Singapore. Also included in the selection are Lekker Design.

SUPERGARDEN presents Singapore’s young, vibrant and evolving design culture by showcasing 22 conversations between Singaporean architects with artists, curators and graphic, fashion, and industrial designers, exchanging words and thoughts over pivotal design talking points such as architecture, fashion, art, graphics, media and industrial and urban design. The designers were selected through FARM’s ongoing informal sharing sessions called ROJAK and an architectural forum; Really Architecture. Another interesting Sinaporean group of designers included in the SuperGarden exhibition are Mixed Reality Lab.

The SUPERGARDEN-project is a way to deal with the creative hybrid environment that is emerging amongst young Singaporean practioneers, as mentioned in the exhibition-foreword:

There is an upsurge of young and effervescent architects in Singapore who are operating in a creative community distinct from the existing organized architectural groupings. While the architectural profession has traditionally been fairly autonomous, this emergent architectural community is a hybrid that finds itself within a design environment, characterized by an uninhibited exchange of ideas between creative practices, erasing the borders between different design genres.

For their contribution to SUPERGARDEN, Five Foot Way has decided to submit a compilation of 100 articles from their website.

It is a compilation of the things that interest them; their conversations, their critiques, their reports and reviews. It is also a representation of the collective contribution of everyone that has been a part of the website. Not only is this book a catalogue, it also serves as a milestone for 5ft Creatives as the company embarks on their next phase of growth.

Lekker Design, a Singapore based architecture firm, whom MovingCities met in the context of Ordos100 – where they presented this very nice double house proposal – are also part of SUPERGARDEN with a project called Monstrous Intersections:

Monstrous Intersections In this proposal, Lekker experimented with a novel typology: a monolithic base with a cluster of smaller structures sitting on top, as if on new ground. The objective of this design proposal was to create a ‘whole’ by juxtaposing two dissimilar, non-matching building types. This is a common characteristic of the environment in Singapore where the singular object is fragmented into a dialogue between multiple forms.

The whole book publication of SUPERGARDEN, including background and proposals of the different teams, is available for download SUPERGARDEN publication

2008 Venice Architecture Biennale
2008 Venice Architecture Biennale – Singapore Pavilion
2008 Venice Architecture Biennale – download SUPERGARDEN publication

Five Foot Way
Lekker Design
Design Singapore Council

Participating Singaporean Offices

PlyStudio
Silnt
Really Architecture
[+0]
Superhyperreal Creatives
Ministry of Design
Five Foot Way
Out Of Stock
Angelus Novus Studio
Design Act
Donna Ong
Asylum
Zarch Collaboratives
Kwodrent
Linghao Architects
Black Design
Tang Ling Nah
FARMWORK
H55
Lekker Design
Union
&Larry

tags: architecture, exhibition, singapore

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