DESIGN FUTURES SYMPOSIUM

Natsai Audrey Chieza is founder and CEO at Faber Futures. She is a leading thinker on the transformative role design can play in the equitable development of consumer biotechnology. With over ten years of experience co-developing multi-sector innovation strategies and shaping policy with global institutions, she leads a dynamic team that translates value and transforms systems across education, design, life science and manufacturing industries. Natsai has established novel design-driven processes for bacteria textile colouration, which have been exhibited internationally, including at Ars Electronica, Design Museum, Pompidou Centre, Vitra Design Museum and the Science Gallery Dublin. She is a member of the current session of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Synthetic Biology, contributing to the industry’s roadmap for a world changed by COVID-19, and has taught on biodesign programmes at Central Saint Martins in London and the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Photo by Toby Coulson.

Thomas Heatherwick is one of the UK’s most prolific designers, whose varied work over two decades is characterised by its originality, inventiveness and humanity. Defying conventional classifications, Thomas founded his studio in 1994 to bring together architecture, urban planning, product design and interiors into a single creative workspace. Working across multiple scales, locations and typologies, Heatherwick Studio has developed into a team of 200 makers and inventors with no signature style. Led by human experience rather than any fixed dogma, the studio creates emotionally compelling places and objects with the smallest possible climate shadow. From their base in London, the studio team is currently working on over 30 projects in ten countries, ranging from a six-hectare mixed-use development in the centre of Tokyo to an electric car that cleans the air as it drives. Thomas’ forthcoming book, Humanise, will be published by Penguin in 2023.

Belinda Huang co-founded ARC Studio Architecture + Urbanism with her husband Khoo Peng Beng in 1998. They were recipients of the prestigious President*s Design Award for the ‘Designer of the Year’ in 2020 and are currently working on projects in Singapore, Malaysia, China, India, Myanmar, Cambodia and Rwanda. Belinda was a co-curator of Singapore’s contribution to the 2010 Venice Biennale, 1000 Singapores: A Model of the Compact City, which is now part of the permanent collection of the Asian Culture Complex in South Korea. She is extremely interested in the human dimension of architecture and believes good architecture can inspire and transform human lives. Belinda shares her humanistic approach with her studio at NUS, with a focus on emotions and architecture. Her most celebrated work to date is the Pinnacle@Duxton (completed in 2009).

Sarah Mineko Ichioka is a strategist, urbanist, curator and writer. She is Founding Director of Desire Lines, a Singapore-based consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact organisations and initiatives. In previous roles, she has explored the intersections of cities, society and ecology within leading international institutions of culture, policy and research, including Singapore’s National Parks Board, La Biennale di Venezia, LSE Cities, NYC’s Department of Housing Preservation & Development, as Director of The Architecture Foundation (UK) and Co-Director of the London Festival of Architecture. Her book Flourish: Design Paradigms for Our Planetary Emergency (2021), is co-authored with Michael Pawlyn. She has been recognized as a World Cities Summit Young Leader, one of the Global Public Interest Design 100, a British Council / Clore Duffield Cultural Leadership International Fellow, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. She holds degrees from Yale University and the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Photo courtesy Desire Lines.

Khoo Peng Beng co-founded ARC Studio Architecture + Urbanism with his wife Belinda Huang in 1998. They were recipients of the prestigious President*s Design Award for the ‘Designer of the Year’ in 2020 and are currently working on projects in Singapore, Malaysia, China, India, Myanmar, Cambodia and Rwanda. Their lauded transformational design, the Pinnacle@Duxton (completed in 2009), set a benchmark for high-rise, high-density public housing. Peng Beng’s work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Sao Paulo Biennale, Seoul Biennale, Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris and other international exhibitions. He was the lead curator of Singapore’s contribution to the 2010 Venice Biennale, 1000 Singapores: A Model of the Compact City, which is now part of the permanent collection of the Asian Culture Complex in South Korea. Peng Beng’s studio at NUS is focussed on the holonic revolution and trans-contextuality in architecture.

For more than twenty years, Dr Nirmal Kishnani has been at the frontlines of sustainability, advising on projects and policies in Asia, formulating new platforms and scrutinising the space between frontline theory and design practice. His role as consultant includes the retrofit of the Asian Development Bank Headquarters (Philippines), Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (Singapore) and SDE4, the net-zero energy building at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Nirmal was Editor-in-Chief of the FuturArc magazine for more than a decade (2008-2021). In that time, he initiated a conversation on sustainability in Asia and launched two design competitions promoting thought-leadership. His book, Greening Asia: Emerging Principles for Sustainable Architecture (2012), was translated into Bahasa Indonesia and Vietnamese, and was the first to critique the Green building movement in the region. His recent book, Ecopuncture: Transforming Architecture and Urbanism in Asia (2019), argues for new methods and frameworks that go beyond certification checklists, and advocates the repair and regeneration of human-made and natural systems. Nirmal is Programme Co-director of the MSc Integrated Sustainable Design at NUS.

Emi Kiyota, Ph.D. is Associate Professor, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and College of Design and Engineering at NUS, and Director (Program) of the Health District @ Queenstown. She is an environmental gerontologist with more than 20 years of experience in designing and implementing person-centred care in long-term care facilities and hospitals globally. In addition to making a vast array of contributions to national and international initiatives focused on quality improvement in the built environment for long-term care and aging services, Emi holds great concern for the needs of elders in low-middle income countries. In 2010, she founded charitable organisation Ibasho, dedicated to co-creating socially integrated, sustainable communities that value their elders, embodying in the Japanese concept of a place where one feels at home being oneself. Her current focus is on creating socially integrated and resilient cities where elders are engaged and able to actively participate in their communities.

“Study the changing world. Get inspired. Talk to people. Build things. Contemplate navel. Create compelling models for a new world and understand why they matter. Connect across bridges to create uncommon partnerships.” Duleesha Kulasooriya is the Executive Director for Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, Asia Pacific – part of a global management research institute exploring the edges of business and technology. He has researched, written and spoken extensively about emerging business landscapes, the future of work, the sustainability transformation and about relevance of ‘edges’ such as the maker movement, the sharing economy, transformative technologies, lovable cities, and Burning Man. Duleesha has an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, a B.S. in Engineering and a B.A. in Economics from Swarthmore College.

Dr Erik L’Heureux (Ph.D.) FAIA, LEED AP BD+C is an award-winning architect and academic based in Singapore. Despite his cool-climate background, Erik has been based on the equator for two decades, developing expertise in designing climatically calibrated buildings. He led the design of a series of award-winning projects, including the super-low-carbon renovations of SDE 1 and SDE 3 at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he has taught for over 17 years. The Wheelwright Prize from Harvard University has recognised his creative efforts, as well as several AIA New York and NY State Design Awards, SARA NY & National Design Awards, an INDE.Award, and a President*s Design Award (‘Design of the Year’) in 2011 for 1000 Singapores: A Model of the Compact City. His writing includes Deep Veils (ORO Editions, 2014), Renovating Carbon (ORO Editions, 2023), and numerous articles; and he was co-editor for Drawing Climate (Birkhäuser, 2021).

Lim Siong Guan is a professor of practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. He speaks at forums on leadership, national governance, preparing for the future, organisational excellence, and change management. Siong Guan was Group President of GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund (2007-2016), and chaired the Singapore Economic Development Board (2006-2009). He was Principal Private Secretary to Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, was Head of the Singapore Civil Service, and has been Permanent Secretary of the Ministries of Defence, Education, and Finance, and the Prime Minister’s Office. He co-authored two books with Joanne H. Lim: The Leader, The Teacher & You, and Winning with Honour, and wrote a third book, Can Singapore Fall?

Mae-ling Lokko is an architectural scientist, designer and educator from Ghana and the Philippines whose work focuses on the upcycling of agrowaste and biopolymer materials. Her research integrates a broad range of technical, environmental, social and cultural criteria and questions contemporary material-value systems, codevelops business models for upcycling between the Global North and South, and evolves material design criteria to meet generative justice goals. She is an Assistant Professor at Yale University’s School of Architecture and the Founder of Willow Technologies, focused on the research, design and development of biobased building materials. She was the Director for the Building Sciences Program and Assistant Professor at Rensselaer’s School of Architecture from 2018-2021. Her recent projects have been exhibited in UAE, Belgium, Netherlands, UK and Italy. Mae-ling holds a Ph.D. and Masters from the Center of Architecture, Science and Ecology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and B.A. from Tufts University.

Photo by Shannon Staney.

Michela Magas is a designer who bridges the worlds of science and art, design and technology, academic research and industry with a track record of over 25 years of innovation. She is innovation advisor to the European Commission and the G7 leaders, member of President von der Leyen’s High Level Round Table for the New European Bauhaus, and member of the Advisory Board of CERN IdeaSquare (ISAB-G). In 2017 she was the first woman from the creative industries to be awarded European Woman Innovator. She created the concept of the Industry Commons which has galvanised European industry around cross-domain data interoperability. She is the Founder and CEO of Stockholm-based MTF Labs, a global community platform of around 8,000 creative innovators and scientific researchers, which provides a test case for innovation in areas as diverse as neuroscience, forestry and microcomputing. For 20 years she ran Stromatolite Design Lab in London creating design futures with global clients such as Apple, Nike and Nokia.

Photo by Nebojsa Babic.

Aaron Maniam is a Singaporean civil servant, having served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Centre for Strategic Futures, Civil Service College and Ministry of Trade and Industry. Currently Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information, and Chief, Global Positioning Strategy, he oversees digital economics, digital literacy and access, and international digital partnerships. He was educated at Oxford and Yale. His Ph.D., from Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, involved a comparative study of digital government projects in Estonia, New Zealand and Singapore. In his free time, he writes poetry, facilitates inter-religious dialogues, and teaches at the National University of Singapore’s Scholars Programme. He is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, an Asia 21 Young Leader of the Asia Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Charlotte McCann is The Economist‘s South East Asia Correspondent. She covers politics, business and society in Singapore, where she is based, and elsewhere in the region. Before moving to Singapore, she was an editor in the London office of The Economist‘s sister magazine, 1843, where she wrote about the arts, music and gender. She is the author of a short history of sexuality.

Prof. Erwin Viray leads SUTD’s sustainability initiatives. Prior to this role, he was Head of SUTD’s Architecture and Sustainable Design Pillar from 2016 to 2021. He was Global Excellence Professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology and Head of the Graduate School of Architecture and Design from 2012 to 2016; and Chief Communications Officer for Kyoto Design Lab. He served as a Member of the Board of TOTO GALLERY MA in Tokyo and was a Member of the Advisory Council for the Barcelona Institute of Architecture. Erwin is an Award Ambassador for the LafargeHolcim Awards in Asia Pacific and has served as a jury chair and member of various prominent architecture awards in the region. Erwin has been an Editor of the influential magazine a+u (Architecture + Urbanism) since 1996. He is the author or co-author of several books and has written numerous articles for specialized journals and architectural magazines.

Wong Mun Summ Wong co-founded the Singapore-based architectural practice WOHA in 1994. He is a Professor-in-Practice at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Architecture where he co-directs the Integrated Sustainable Design Masters Studio. WOHA works at all scales, from interiors and architecture to public spaces and master plans. The practice sees their projects as active components that participate in larger urban and natural systems. Their projects foster community, enable stewardship of nature, generate biocentric beauty, activate ecosystem services and build resilience. WOHA’s award-winning projects include PARKROYAL Collection Pickering, Kampung Admiralty, SkyVille @ Dawson and the Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore.

Photo by Studio Periphery.

Shaway Yeh is one of China’s key opinion leaders on fashion and culture. Under her editorial direction, Modern Weekly has reached China’s elite readers with the latest international news, trends, and cultural discussion and became China’s most influential lifestyle publication. She has been using her media outreach and influence in the fashion community to advocate issues related to sustainability and innovation. In 2017 she founded consulting agency yehyehyeh to push forward the sustainability agenda among Chinese brands and designers, bringing together sustainability, creativity and innovation to instigate value-based change. Her annual Shan Future Forum brings thinkers, creatives, entrepreneurs and innovators together to discuss major issues of sustainability. Shaway is advisor to Copenhagen Fashion Summit,Green Carpet Fashion Award, The International Woolmark Prize and Kering Generation Award.