Inside the Singapore design showcase at Milan Design Week 2026

From Apr 21 to Apr 26, Foro Buonaparte 54 in Milan’s Brera Design District became a slice of Singapore. The venue hosted Prototype Island, a DesignSingapore Council showcase presented during Milan Design Week 2026, alongside the 64th edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano.

Prototype Island is DesignSingapore Council’s first Milan Design Week showcase featuring only Singapore-based practitioners, following three editions of its Future Impact series. Its title points to the experimental nature of the works, which show that good design is as much about tools, systems and ways of thinking as it is about objects.

SINGAPORE DESIGN IN PROGRESS

“We weren’t interested in polished outcomes. The focus was on work that shows how thinking turns into structure, how ideas move from speculation into use,” said lead curator Hunn Wai. Eian Siew was assistant curator, while Maria Cristina Didero served as Global Perspectives Advisor.

The 15 works span three broad themes: care infrastructures and cultural continuities, technological and material ecologies, and everyday infrastructures. Together, they suggest how Singapore design has evolved over the past two decades – from building capability and meeting global standards to developing a more self-directed voice.

Wai said, “Early efforts focused on building capability and aligning with global standards. What we see now is more self-direction – designers are taking on ageing, healthcare, sustainability, identity, and technological mediation. The work extends beyond formal expression and market-driven design toward the orchestration of relationships, processes and lived realities.”

QUANTUM COMPUTATION, AI AND HERITAGE

The 15 projects range widely. Parable’s modular ceramic system, Iris, bridges handmade craft with configurable forms, while ODD M.’s Fragility to Permanence turns eggshells and post-consumer waste into functional objects. 1 Qubit, by Jake Tan, Ezequiel Ignacio Rodriguez Chiacchio and Bao Songyu, uses classical computation to explore ideas inspired by quantum computing.

Technology also underpins Carlos Banon and Yiping Goh’s FORMAS.AI, a spatial workflow platform that addresses authorship when designing with AI. Reynard Seah’s Noda is a flexible joint system for temporary, adaptable structures, while Interactive Materials Lab’s Scan to Play turns the everyday barcode into a playful interface between the digital and physical worlds.

Several works also explore the relationship between heritage and new technologies. Roger Ng Wei Lun’s Lustre Series and Earth Deity Altar reimagines Peranakan furniture and spiritual objects through contemporary materials and digital techniques. Threads of Becoming, by Melvin Ong, Shervon Ong and Andy Yeo, combines 3D printing with lacquer threading, while Aditi Neti’s Of Curves and Hands translates kolam drawing through computational systems. Serina Lee’s Language System draws on Chinese calligraphy to shape garments that explore cross-cultural identity.

USING DESIGN FOR HEALTHCARE AND INCLUSIVITY

Several projects apply design to healthcare, accessibility and inclusion. TUSITALA’s 3D-printed tactile picture book, made in collaboration with NAMIC Hub@SIT and iC2 PrepHouse, uses raised images and Braille text to expand reading options for children with visual impairments. Celeste Seah’s Rememo, meanwhile, uses generative AI to create memory prompts for dementia therapy.

Creative agency WeAreSuper’s People of the World collection was co-created with persons with disabilities at Enabling Village in Singapore. Zoey Chan, Singapore’s National Winner of the James Dyson Award 2025, created nido, a compact insulin needle holder designed to make daily diabetes management safer and more discreet.

Some projects, including TessaCast, are already being used beyond the exhibition. Developed by Audrey Ng, Rachel Ng and Jasper Chua at A*Star Innovation Factory@SIMTech, the 4D-printed orthopaedic cast is designed to be more breathable, adaptable and patient-friendly than conventional fibreglass casts.

We spoke with several designers to find out more about their work.

Threads of Becoming

Andy Yeo was an interior designer before moving to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, to learn lacquer thread sculpture, or qi xian diao. The 1,400-year-old craft, which originated in Fujian, China, uses thin, pliable threads made from raw lacquer, brick powder and tung oil to create raised patterns on Buddhist statues and ceremonial objects. For this project, Yeo collaborated with Melvin Ong, founder of design studio Desinere, and Shervon Ong, a senior industrial designer at Omni Devices, to apply the endangered craft to contemporary vases.

The team sketched ideas in Figma, while Yeo contributed his knowledge of lacquer-thread motifs, from the armour of Chinese generals to the floral embellishments of imperial robes. Ong said the project is a way of “evolving the technique, trying different materials, or working in ways we haven’t thought of yet; there are crafts like this quietly disappearing in Singapore, and part of what we hope Threads of Becoming does is bring some awareness to that…to find ways of keeping them alive and relevant.”

Iris

Iris is made from local clay harvested and preserved 40 years ago by Sam Mui Kuang Pottery, one of Singapore’s oldest family-run ceramic studios. “There’s an intuitive nature of scaling with archetypal forms. It can be seen in pattern making, mark making, and ancient to modern tiling; it’s how nature builds,” said Ken Yuktasevi of the design.

The founder and creative director of Parable wanted the modular lamp system to be “simple, tactile, and primitive to create”. Yet the final work combines digital technology with precise glazing techniques to achieve its form and finish. Iris stands apart from mass-produced modular products through its small-batch process: each piece is moulded by hand and assembled in the studio.

TessaCast

TessaCast addresses several problems associated with traditional plaster or fibreglass casts, which can be heavy, uncomfortable and difficult to adjust. “They are [also] hard to clean, leading to higher risk of skin irritation or infection; traditional casts can also disrupt simple daily routines such as showering,” said the team, comprising Audrey Ng, deputy head, Rachel Ng, senior research engineer, and Jasper Chua, senior research engineer, of A*Star Innovation Factory@SIMTech.

Developed in collaboration with medical technology company Castomize, TessaCast starts as a flat 2D structure. A practitioner warms the cast, wraps and contours it around the limb, then secures it with an integrated locking mechanism. As it cools, it hardens and retains its shape. The cast is lightweight, breathable, waterproof, easier to clean and can be reheated for adjustment, reducing material waste.

“TessaCast has moved beyond the prototype stage and seen real-world uptake. It has been certified as safe for use, and secured approvals and purchase interest in Singapore, South Korea, Taipei, and Australia,” said the team of the 4D-printed orthopaedic cast system.

Rememo

“Rememo began as my undergraduate thesis project at the National University of Singapore’s Division of Industrial Design. I first explored Rememo’s potential through using it with my grandfather, who has severe cognitive impairment,” said Celeste Seah. After graduation, she developed the project at National University of Singapore’s Interactive Materials Lab in partnership with ECON Healthcare. She is now a product designer at Open Government Products.

The human-centred therapy tool supports reminiscence therapy for dementia patients, using generative AI to reconstruct memory cues when personal photographs are unavailable, inaccessible or no longer spark recognition.

Rememo is already in use and supports multilingual, multicultural conversations. Seah recalled one session in which a reclusive nursing home resident opened up about having been a teacher. After selecting a “basketball” prompt card and seeing the corresponding AI-generated image, the resident remembered a Primary 4 student winning a basketball game in 1992.

“In dementia care, there are always ups and downs; if Rememo can help therapy staff enable more of these heartfelt moments, I consider that a success,” said Seah.

FORMAS.AI

Architects and related professionals often move between multiple tools to sketch, draw, render and create presentation images. AI can complicate that workflow when creators lose control over how their designs are interpreted by algorithms. FORMAS.AI aims to address this by combining several steps in one platform, allowing users to create photorealistic visualisations while retaining control over the process. Launched only four months ago, it is already in active use in leading international firms.

“The creative outputs they are achieving were simply not possible without FORMAS,” said Carlos Banon, co-founder and CAIO of FORMAS.AI, and associate professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. He co-founded FORMAS.AI with CEO Yiping Goh.

Banon stressed that the platform does not design for the architect. “Architecture requires deep domain expertise, and we have built that expertise into the platform itself – into how it interprets intent, how it preserves continuity, how it handles constraint. The architect navigates from intention to output – a brief, a document, an image, a 3D model, a space – and the authorship stays theirs throughout.”