An extraordinary display of furniture, objects and sculptural works made from four sustainable American hardwoods at the Red Dot Museum.
Discovered Singapore, a curation of designs from the original London Exhibition, opened today (May 16, 2024) at the Red Dot Design Museum in Singapore. Showcasing the next generation of design talent, the collaboration presents a visionary group of young creatives in an extraordinary display of furniture, objects and sculptural works in wood. Conceived by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), Discovered Singapore provides a platform for new creatives and an opportunity for talented emerging designers to show their work to the public and the industry at Singapore’s premier design venue.
Selected from the original global line up of 20, the 10 designers exhibiting in Singapore from May 16 – 22, 2024, worked alongside design mentors and AHEC’s global manufacturing partners to each develop an object made from their choice of four sustainable hardwoods: American red oak, cherry and hard and soft maple. Throughout the project, designers were supported by AHEC’s technical experts, and mentored by established designers Nathan Yong (Singapore) and Adam Markowitz (Australia).
“The original iteration of Discovered was conceived to engage and inspire the next generation of talented young designers. After a successful exhibition in London and then Milan, it is wonderful to have the opportunity for the 10 designers from the Asia Pacific region to exhibit their work closer to home in the design hub that is Singapore,” said John Chan, Director Southeast Asia and Greater China, AHEC.
The collaboration was initiated during the pandemic. Selected designers were invited to think freely about their experience of living and working in isolation, responding to themes of touch, reflection and strength, and to channel their own experiences into a piece that represents our functional and emotional connection to everyday objects. The designers considered ideas such as identity and cultural heritage, family and social ritual and the inherent comfort of touch.
“This project has not only enabled us to provide young designers with valuable learning experience on product design and development with sustainable hardwoods, it has also been an opportunity to work again with established design mentors and the best manufacturers in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. They are leading the way in making efforts to ensure sustainable design is also sustainably made,” added Roderick Wiles, AHEC Regional Director.
This collaboration has resulted in a highly diverse selection of objects, ranging from functional furniture such as cabinets, tables and seats to more abstract, sculptural works that inspire reflection. Taken as a whole, Discovered represents how experiences of a changing world have impacted each designer’s personal and creative journeys.
Nong Chotipatoomwan – Thought Bubble Bangkok, Thailand
Wood: American red oak
A nostalgia for travel and social interaction guided Chotipatoomwan’s creative thinking through her project. Physical transitions were replaced with changing states of mind, and the physical realm merged with the psychological realm through domestic space. The designer looked at furniture created for relaxation, and landed on a rocking motion, which became the basis for her chair, offering a mix of relaxation and repetitive movement to enhance mindfulness. She used red oak for the chair because she was fascinated by its grain. ‘It’s quite expressive and I was interested in its porous nature.’
Kodai Iwamoto – Pari Pari Tokyo, Japan
Wood: American red oak
For his project, Iwamoto researched traditional Japanese techniques, such as uzukuri (giving texture to wood by scrubbing) and chouna (chiselling the surface with an adze), and then started experimenting directly on the wood, peeling its layers to create a new veneer. Working with red oak, he peeled it by cutting the panel’s edge and removing the surface by hand, resulting in a jagged effect where the texture of the grain emerges. These imperfectly textured panels became the starting point for a design exploration that led him to a round table shape, using the subtle material as a base to create the effect of an ancient tree trunk.
Mew Mungnatee – Corners Lamp Bangkok, Thailand
Woods: American soft maple, cherry
Mungnatee’s emotional response to the objects surrounding her took in the relationship between form, light and shadow, and with this project, she explored this connection through geometry. Her lamp designs, inspired by pagodas, are based on a bulb casting a shadow over surfaces below thanks to an intricate grid composition featuring wooden slats and indented corners. She worked with soft maple, because of the manner in which light bounces off its surface (‘The wood has an opalescent gleam,’ she explains) and American cherry for its ability to take stain.
Trang Nguyen – The Roof Stool Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Woods: American cherry, red oak, hard maple
Nguyen looked at traditional Vietnamese roof tiles for her project, creating a collection of nesting stools that replicate the way the tiles overlap to hide the connecting structures below. Her simple stool design is inspired by traditional temple architecture and Vietnamese dresses, and features pins made of contrasting wood at the joint, which remains hidden when the stools are stacked and is revealed when they are in use. ‘I chose three different types of wood; cherry, red oak and maple, because of their colour differences,’ explains Nguyen. ‘By randomly using two of the species for the pins and another one for the rest for the stool, users can explore the various timbers when they unstack each piece.’ As people have been spending more time at home, her design is imagined to provide additional seats, while creating a beautiful composition when not in use.
Taiho Shin – Ikare
Seoul, Republic of Korea Wood: American hard maple
During his time in isolation, Shin noted that ‘objects help human resilience through unusual situations’, and this thought served as the basis for his project. Guided by the ‘Ikea effect’ (consumers place higher value on products they partially created), he thought of a half-made design that users could partly assemble to foster interaction with their objects. He created one small table, put together thanks to an ingenious but simple-to-use joint system (no glue necessary), and the design multiplies to create a stackable system of shelves, suitable for different spaces. He chose hard maple, as the density of the timber means the joint can be moved in and out without crushing the fibre of the wood.
Ivana Taylor – Reframe Adelaide, Australia
Woods: American hard maple, cherry and red oak
Taylor’s own experience of solitude led to extensive periods of reflection, ultimately inspiring her to change her approach to designing and making. For this project, she aimed to ‘design a contemplative sculptural object that triggered reflection on the multi-layered nature of any experience, including isolation’. A recurring theme of her research featured ways of framing a view at different scales, and the resulting design is a sculpture made from a series of small carved objects that layer to create a composition acting as a ‘sculpted path for light’. Working with three woods, Taylor was interested in exploring different material hollows, cutting each layer to expose the wood’s grain.
Yunhan Wang – Winding Stream Zhuhai, China
Wood: American hard maple
Unable to carry out certain customs during lockdown, people are confined to performing rituals at home. There is a novel need for suitable furniture and objects that can fit a small space but serve the same purpose. Wang wanted to create a domestic alternative to the ‘winding stream party’, a
Chinese drinking custom in which poetry is composed while a cup is floated down a stream with people sat on both sides; the person sitting in front of the cup that stops has to drink it. Inspired by Hakka round houses, Wang created a compact table design with storage concealed in the legs and a central slit to fit trays and cups. The table is also equipped with a drain so users can dispose of their water through the twisting gully, and it then trickles into a waste bucket housed in the main leg. Wang chose hard maple for Winding Stream because she was drawn to the light colour, and the timber has been spray-painted to prevent rot from setting in.
Vivienne Wong – luxta Me (Beside me) Melbourne, Australia
Wood: American cherry
Dancer-turned-designer Wong looked at non-verbal communication as the starting point of her project, approaching the task from a personal point of reflection and knowledge. ‘I wanted to translate my previous understanding of how we can connect and communicate,’ she says, and looked to create a piece to nurture strength, intimacy and connection. Invisible physical boundaries and the creation of textures through light formed the basis of the project, which developed into a coffee table featuring interlocking echoed forms, where the functional joinery also became a decorative motif for the piece. Wong chose American cherry because of its grain and colour. ‘It has a beautiful warmth in its pinkish, red hue,’ she says. ‘I felt that supported everything I was trying to put into this piece.’ Her design’s name (using the Latin word for ‘beside’) represents the desire for human connection and closeness that guided the process.
Tan Wei Xiang – Recollect Singapore
Woods: American hard maple, red oak
Searching for a tangible physical connection to loved ones (beyond virtual calls), Tan turned to keepsakes as a way to fight nostalgia. His keepsakes cabinet is imagined as a way to hold, preserve and give respect to the items we hold dear. Its forms were inspired by Singapore’s ubiquitous construction sites and the ridged zinc sheets used to protect them. Tan recreated this motif as the outer shell of his tall, lean cabinet, and created curved shelves to sit inside it, with a mirrored, polished brass circle, mimicking the sun setting on the horizon. The designer had worked with maple
before but never from the American hardwood forests and, for this project, he selected a combination of hard maple of different thicknesses to achieve the ‘crinkled’ effect on the shell, and red oak for the curved shelves inside.
Duncan Young – Shelter Within Adelaide, Australia
Wood: American hard maple
Young focused on the materiality of timber, and how this organic material can help us connect with nature while confined at home. ‘For those in dense urban environments, lockdowns have impacted our physical and mental strength by limiting the biological need humans have for being in outdoor spaces,’ he says. He looked at studies analyzing the positive impact of nature on physical and mental health, and in response created a modern cabinet of curiosities as a pillar to nature, for the user to engage with the natural world while at home. Featuring a solid carcass with discreet joinery and a moiré-effect shelf (a design inspired by the historic symbolism of the cabinet as a theatre), the simple plinth includes two glass sculptural elements handmade at Young’s studio, refracting and distorting the light to evoke the effect of walking beneath a canopy of trees. Young used hard maple to create the carcass. ‘It’s such a pared-back timber,’ he explains. ‘It has a gentle grain structure, and I thought the lightness would soften the heaviness of my piece’s form.’