A Nation by Design
Although Singapore is one of Asia’s smallest countries, it’s difficult to neatly sum up what ‘Singaporean design’ looks and feels like. This is a compliment from a critical perspective, but a conundrum from a promotional one.
Could this be because Singapore’s material culture is influenced by so many different references? With its history as a trading settlement dating back to the late 13th century, Singapore is the last remaining example of a very particular urban typology, says Kennie Ting, director of the Asian Civilisations Museum, who recently opened the ACM’s new Materials and Design galleries. As Ting explains, the ‘cosmopolitan Asian port city’ once included ‘sister cities’ Guangzhou, Nagasaki, Mumbai, Jakarta, Yangon, Melaka and Ho Chi Minh City, among many others, that, unlike Singapore ‘have all “returned” to their hinterlands with the advent of the nation state since World War Two’, becoming ‘rather more nationalistic and inward-oriented’.
Ting says that given Singapore’s form as a cosmopolitan Asian port city, its material culture ‘doesn’t
