Urban Design Festival

Singapore Design Week 2019

Location: Singapore, Jalan Besar

Area: 3250 sqm

Year: 2019

Space Design Partner:

Pier Alessio Rizzardi

Desiner Team:

Team (Jerald Lim, Project Manager - Federica Lamera, Strategic Designer - Daniel O Connor, Partnership Manager - Jordana Jowel - Raynold Tow

In collaboration with

Lopelab

Festival Director

Lorenzo Petrillo

Photographer

Fred Greve

LOPELAB Tactical Urbanism Specialist, together with Design Singapore and TCA Think Tank, has developed an instant revolution in the vibrant district of Jalan Besar in Singapore for Design Week 2019. Coming from attentive research of unused urban areas in the region, the project attempts to give back to the citizens the spaces of the underused car-parking infrastructures, creating auditoriums, workshops, exhibitions, and community lounges using the circular design approach with overproduced and available recycled materials.

The 2nd edition of the Singapore Urban Design Festival (from 14 to 17 March 2019) was the key event of Singapore Design Week, which turned the underutilized carpark in Jalan Besar into a vibrant four-days design village.

As stated by Lorenzo Petrillo, director of LOPELAB "The 2019 edition of SUDF aimed to build on the foundation set in 2018, to showcase a range of innovative solutions, as a concrete positive vision of the future urban living, more sustainable, livelier and vibrant."

The Festival was conceptualized to champion sustainable urban development, transforming this under-utilized infrastructure into a human-centric attraction, to bring industry and public into one home for shared learning, experiences, and inspiration. "This year, we tried to embrace the principles of the circular design," says Lorenzo Petrillo "through the curation of our talks programme, the materials used to build the set-up, the venue, and the curation of our partners and exhibitors".

According to Pier Alessio Rizzardi director of TCA Think Tank and space designer of the Festival “The Festival was conceptualized to champion sustainable urban development, transforming this infrastructure into a human-centric attraction, to bring industry and public into one home for shared learning, experiences, and inspiration.

The design and construction of the space arise from modular structures, using materials such as plastic beer crates and wooden panels made of upcycled agricultural waste to construct tables, tiers, ideation pods, exhibition spaces, and much more. The light installation pay homage to the works of Yona Friedman, Thomas Saraceno, Jason Peters, and Olafur Eliasson. Evading from mere structural principles to pursue ephemerality and evoke surreal perceptions in visitors, the structure aims at embodying a monument, a path, and space, concentrating on building optical frames to capture the city and other visitors. When the night comes, the structure itself fades into the darkness, and the halos bring forward the visual complexity with an illusion of infinity”.

In the four days event, more than 2500 visitors experienced a blend of inspiring talks, immersive live entertainment, workshops, and displays of innovative urban solutions. The innovation talks took an in-depth look at technology for sustainable development, tackling resources, mobility, and users, defining the main topics for each day of the summit. It included panel discussions, quick fire rounds and presentations by over 40 distinguished speakers and panellists from consultancy firms like (Accenture, ARUP, AECOM), government agencies (URA, NEA), top architectural firms (DPArchitects, Pomeroy Studio), brands and universities (LKY School of Public Policies, Yale NUS, FCL, SUTD).

The Circular Design Workshops, conducted by industry-leading companies, took place over four days of hands-on workshops, allowing architects, designers, and the local community to experience ECOR materials and recycled paper origami, brainstorming and prototyping sessions about our ideal future living space and how turning the waste areas of the overpopulated Asian megalopolises in into communities.

Led by industry leaders, the Circular Design Workshops took place over four days of practical workshops, providing architects, designers and the community to experiment with ECOR materials and recycled paper origami, brainstorming sessions and prototyping on our ideal future living space and how to transform waste areas of overpopulated Asian megalopolises into vibrant communities.