Prototype Island Homecoming

Details

First presented at Milan Design Week 2026, the award-winning Prototype Island returns to Singapore in a homecoming presentation at the 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 exhibition invites local audiences to look again at the conditions, practices and forms of experimentation that shape design in Singapore. Prototype Island explores Singapore not as a finished product, but as a nation continually in the making. The exhibition 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 exhibition 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 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 will be at the exhibition 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 space where art and science converge, inviting visitors to experience the world in new ways. It serves as a home for creativity, innovation, and the unexpected connections shaping the future.
Opened in 2011 and designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the museum has showcased works by major artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Salvador Dalí, alongside scientific exhibitions on particle physics, big data, and more.
Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in digital art at teamLab Future World, or to enter new realities in our state-of-the-art VR Gallery. The museum also offers thought-provoking films at ArtScience Cinema, and learning experiences at ArtScience Laboratory, where one can explore hands-on activities and experiments.
ArtScience Museum welcomes all visitors to come, explore, and see new possibilities.

Contact:
Email Address: [email protected]