As part of the first Singapore Urban Design Festival, organized by Lopelab during the yearly Singapore Design Week, we created an urban installation called “Microcity/Hyperfurniture”.
We imagined a cluster of urban furniture in shape of buildings. Each element represents an elementary architectural form, scaled down to the size of a furniture. People can inhabit them as if they were buildings. Playing with an ambiguity of scale and meaning, we intended to generate a playful intervention that can activate a transitional space in the heart of the neighborhood.
At the same time we explored the contradictory relationship of privacy and public space. Can we have an introspective experience when immersed in the public space? Can we claim a space of our own? The objects are conceived as an intimate shelter within an anonymous domain, providing a degree of screening from the outside. Like a soft infrastructure, possibly expanding across the city, the intervention proposes an intimate space defined by a recognizable element that can be appropriated by the user for a while.
During the Urban Design Festival, we also had the opportunity to share our thoughts on the meaning of public space and some ideas behind our installation.
Microcity/Hyperfurniture is between Tras Street and Tanjong Pagar Road until mid June!
Enter our photography competition: we challenge you to show us funny, reflective, serious, unexpected ways of using our installation.
The best pictures, posted on social medias using #udfsgseed, will have the chance to bring home one of our microbuildings after the exhibition period.