The Petite Powerhouse who overhauled Singapore’s Top Design Award

DesignSingapore Council’s Senior Manage Genine Loo was featured in the Public Service Division’s Challenge magazine for her role in reviewing the President*s Design Award (PDA) in 2016. The P*DA is Singapore’s highest accolade for designers and designs across all disciplines.

Genine has a colourful and varied resume, from working as a multimedia art collective in Shanghai, to being a local interior design intern, and pursuing a postgraduate research degree in Environmental Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her career path has given her a wide knowledge base on the design industry to draw from.

Genine’s time at Goldsmiths taught her to challenge common conventions of design and question the who, what and how of a project. She also spent some time with a London landscape architect, where a redesign proposal for a beloved community area was immediately rejected by outraged locals, a reminder that design should go hand-in-hand with on-the-ground user consultation.

These precious lessons were incorporated into a meticulous review process to relook the award’s structure, processes and programmes. This led to the refreshed P*DA that places greater emphasis on impact – assessing how designs enables economic transformation, raises quality of life or advances the Singapore Brand for instance.

Read the full article at Challenge Magazine: https://www.psd.gov.sg/challenge/people/profile/redesigning-a-top-design-award