Prototype Island Homecoming

Details

First presented at Milan Design Week 2026, the award-winning Prototype Island returns to Singapore in a homecoming presentation at ArtScience Museum.

The exhibition was honoured with the inaugural Fuorisalone Award Special Mention for Essere Progetto (“Being the Project”), which celebrates the value of the creative design process, recognising the methodology, research and responsibility that underpin a project. The award goes beyond the beauty of form and the object itself, valuing the process as an essential part of the final result.

In this new context, the showcase invites local audiences to look again at the conditions, practices and forms of experimentation that shape design in Singapore. Prototype Island Homecoming explores Singapore not as a finished product, but as a nation continually in the making. The showcase considers Singapore as a living prototype: an environment where ideas are tested, refined and translated into the systems, rituals and infrastructures that shape everyday life.

Bringing together established and emerging transdisciplinary designers based in Singapore, the showcase presents 15 projects responding to contemporary challenges across three interconnected themes.

Care Infrastructures & Cultural Continuities explores how design can sustain social systems, lived experience and cultural knowledge.
Technological & Material Ecologies investigates emerging relationships between digital intelligence, material innovation, and hybrid production.
Everyday Infrastructures examines the objects, processes and operational systems that quietly organise contemporary life.

The works are presented not as static artefacts, but as propositions shaped through use, feedback and iteration. Together, they form a microcosm of global transformation, revealing design as a method for navigating complexity, extending cultural practices and translating emerging possibilities into forms that can be tested in everyday life.

Curated by Hunn Wai, Co-founder of Lanzavecchia + Wai, with Eian Siew as Assistant Curator and Maria Cristina Didero as Global Perspectives Advisor, Prototype Island Homecoming brings together experimentation, craft and emerging technologies to reflect Singapore’s distinctive approach to purpose-driven innovation, where constraint becomes catalyst, experimentation becomes method, and design becomes a tool for shaping more resilient futures.

ArtScience Museum is the venue partner for Prototype Island Homecoming.

Meet the Designers: Prototype Island Homecoming Open House
25 & 26 July, 1 & 2 August 2026 (Saturday & Sunday)
2pm – 4pm

What does it mean to live in a city that is always in prototype?

Across two weekends, the designers behind Prototype Island Homecoming will be at the showcase for informal conversations with visitors. Hear firsthand how their projects emerged, the questions they seek to answer, and the experiments, iterations and collaborations that shape their work.

From rethinking everyday infrastructures to exploring new material ecologies and forms of care, these sessions offer an opportunity to engage with design as an ongoing process of testing, adapting and imagining possible futures.

Drop in, ask questions, exchange ideas, and join the conversation.

Organiser

DesignSingapore Council

The DesignSingapore Council (Dsg)’s vision is for Singapore to be a liveable, loveable, and limitless city by design. As the national agency for design, our mission is to develop the design sector to be globally competitive, champion the use of design for innovation and growth in Singapore, and make life better in this UNESCO Creative City of Design. Dsg is a subsidiary of the Singapore Economic Development Board.

Venue Partner

ArtScience Museum

ArtScience Museum is a major cultural institution in Singapore that shapes and explores perspectives on how the world is seen and navigated through the convergence of art, science, technology and culture.

Since its inception in 2011 at Marina Bay Sands, the Museum has staged a rotating slate of exhibitions and programmes covering topics from science and future-forward technologies to design and pop culture. It is home to permanent exhibition teamLab Future World and has featured the works of both all-time greats and contemporary visionaries. It also curates original in-house exhibitions, serving as a hub to cultivate and spotlight regional talent. Beyond the galleries, the Museum houses a VR Gallery, ArtScience Cinema and ArtScience Laboratory, inviting visitors to delve into the future through a range of holistic and educational experiences.

Contact:
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