A record number of Singaporean style innovators exhibited at Milan Design Week. Nick Charnley hears how they got on; additional reporting by Laura Dannen

Hundreds of thousands of furniture designers and chair lovers flocked to Milan in April, eager to view the latest styles at the leading event on the international design calendar – Salone Internazionale del Mobile (aka Milan Furniture Fair). And mixed in with the Prada and Philippe Starck exhibits were Singapore’s representatives, on a mission to be taken seriously at an international level. Back home, names like Jason Ong and Jarrod Lim resonate in art, design and fashion circles; not content with being wallfl owers (or more appropriately, wall hangings) in the northern hemisphere, they came out with glue-guns blazing.

Ong, 37, working with fashion designer Ben Wu, showcased ‘Bride Chair’, a metallic seat with trailing hind legs meant to resemble the train on a bride’s dress. A solo piece, ‘Living in Clover’ (pictured below left) – a clover lamp with interlocking petal-like parts – received a contract from an Italian manufacturer. The deal is encouraging, but not shocking: Ong (with his design company Jienshu) is no newcomer to Milan. He made his debut at the Furniture Fair as an independent designer in 2005, and graduated with distinction from the city’s prestigious design school, Domus Academy, in 2002.

Lim (of Jarrod Lim Design), whose pieces included ‘Cuff Chair’ and ‘Collar Magazine Rack’ (pictured below) , thought his work was also well received. ‘I had several companies interested in producing the designs,’ he says, ‘and now I am following up on that interest.’ ‘Cuff Chair’, produced in conjunction with fashion designer Nic Wong and originally shown at this year’s Singapore Fashion Festival, is a lounge chair with two-tone upholstery, shaped and styled to resemble an asymmetric shirt cuff.

Lim and Ong are just two of 15 Singaporean designers (representing six companies) who exhibited in April; many were first-time Milan-ers. The largest collaboration – Blueprint 2008 – brought together six fashion designers and seven furniture designers to create works that blur the distinction between art and function. One notable piece was ‘Saturn’ (pictured below right), a geometric pendant lamp by Wendy Chua and Gabriel Tan from OutofStock (a fourperson design unit linking Singapore, Barcelona and Buenos Aries), and fashion designers Jay Quek and Madeleine Wong of Posse Studios. Elements of Posse’s spring/summer ’08 collection – inspired by David Bowie’s glam-rock alter ego Ziggy Stardust – can be seen in the lamp’s bold colours.


Another creation raising eyebrows was a collaboration between fashion designer Desmond Yang, of Abyzz, and Brian Law and Tan Sixiu of CRISPdesign. The pieces – lowlying furniture with rounder edges and more human curves – received considerable attention. One buyer snapped up CRISPdesign’s ‘Low Tables’, a set of furniture that looks like large sliced pebbles sitting on the floor – another encouraging sign that Singapore’s design choices can be taken seriously abroad. ‘[The festival] certainly created more brand awareness for Abyzz and aroused more interest in local designers and their designs,’ Yang says.

Though Blueprint 2008 received the hype, other local standouts had their moment in the spotlight as well. Hans Tan and Hunn Wai, recent graduates from the Design Academy Eindhoven and recipients of the DesignSingapore scholarship in 2005, showcased work in two exhibitions – ‘STILL’ and ‘Design Factory Brainport’, respectively. Hunn’s ‘Tre di Una’ (‘Three from One’) series of chairs is very playful with colourful joints – pieces that look like gangly wooden teenagers. Tan’s work, on the other hand, attempts to be much more cerebral. ‘Idea of a Clock’, ‘Vitrine of a Vase’ and ‘Portrait of a Lamp’ are all conceptual pieces alluding as much to contemporary visual art as they do design. Han is the first Singaporean chosen to exhibit in STILL, a highly respected section of the festival.

With talks in progress between manufacturers and the designers, the signs look promising for Singaporean designers in the short term. Future international success may depend on whether talks come to fruition, and whether more of the ideas take a step closer to production. Lim sums up the optimistic mood: ‘It is a very good first attempt and needs to be followed up with another display next year.’

Go to www.designsingapore.org for more information on the individual designers.