Future Impact 3: DESIGN NATION Homecoming Showcase

Details

After its debut at Milan Design Week in April 2025, Future Impact 3: DESIGN NATION returns home for Singapore Design Week with a bold showcase celebrating 60 years of Singaporean innovation through design.

Curated by Tony Chambers, Maria Cristina Didero, and—for the first time—a Singaporean curator, Hunn Wai, the exhibition brings together 14 designers and design studios whose works reimagine how we live, connect, and care in an ever-evolving world.

On show are works by Claudia Poh (Werable), Ng Sze Kiat (Bewilder), Olivia Lee, Randy Yeo (Practice Theory), Sacha Leong (Nice Projects), Wei Xiang, Supermama, and a collaborative project by FARM, VOUSE, and Changi General Hospital. Rising design voices include CJ Tan, Eian Siew, Kalinda Chen, Namjot Kaur, Nazurah Rohayat, and Wong Eng Geng. From Milan to Singapore, this is design with purpose—bold, human, and always looking ahead.

Organised into three immersive chapters, the exhibition charts Singapore’s evolving design journey:

• Little Island of Brave Ideas reflects on how design has fuelled national transformation—from HDBs and MRTs to innovations like NEWBrew and colour-coded hawker plates.
• Future Impact 3 features cutting-edge responses to today’s most urgent needs, including inclusive fashion, urban healthcare, and material innovation.
• Virtuoso Visionaires shines a light on six emerging designers pushing boundaries in circularity, identity, and speculative living.

From Milan to Singapore, this is design with purpose — bold, human, and always looking ahead.

Panel sessions

Trash talk: Reimagining waste through design on 28 Sep, 2 to 4pm

in conversation with Randy Yeo (Practice Theory), Wong Eng Geng and Ng Sze Kiat (Bewilder)

From transforming fungi into furniture to giving urban detritus a new lease of life, this panel will dive into how seemingly “wild” or unconventional design ideas – especially those rooted in reclamation, upcycling, and circularity – can be brought to life with purpose and creativity. The discussion aims to inspire new ways of thinking about waste, material value and the role of design in cultivating more sustainable ways of life. To spark ideas on mindful creation and consumption, the session will conclude with a show-and-tell of prototypes and samples, offering practical first-hand insights from three unique perspectives on how to start discovering waste as a resource for creative intervention.

Road to recovery: Designing the shape of care on 11 Oct, 11am to 12pm

in conversation with Claudia Poh (Werable), Eian Siew and a collective formed by FARM, VOUSE and Changi General Hospital

This panel brings together designers whose practices centre on interventions that empower individuals and uphold agency, empathy and dignity. From the personal to the systemic – such as adaptive clothing that enables persons with disabilities to dress independently, harnessing air as a lifting mechanism, and reimagining systems and experiences within an emergency ward – this session invites participants to think about how design can reshape the ways people care, heal, and support one another.

Heritage Futures: Weaving identity through design on 2 Nov, 3 to 4pm

in conversation with Nazurah Rohayat, Supermama and Olivia Lee

From reimagining traditional textiles using AI-generated motifs to rethinking domestic rituals and revaluing everyday objects, this panel will explore how design can both preserve and re-invent cultural identity. It brings together designers whose work bridges the past and the future, merging heritage crafts, vernacular traditions and local narratives with contemporary materials, technologies and forms.

Participants will gain insights into how cultural symbols and traditions can be reinterpreted for a global stage without losing their soul, and how design can foster belonging, pride and inclusivity in an increasingly homogenised world. A closing activity will invite the audience to collaboratively create a new “future relic” – a shared artefact that captures the evolving spirit of Singaporean identity.

The above sessions are free with registration.

Organiser

DesignSingapore Council

DesignSingapore Council’s (Dsg) vision is for Singapore to be an innovation-driven economy and a loveable city through design by 2025. As the national agency that promotes design, our mission is to develop the design sector, help Singapore use design for innovation and growth, and make

Contact

Name: Outreach & Engagement
Email Address: [email protected]