President*s Design Award 2023 Exhibition

ABOUT

The President*s Design Award (P*DA) is Singapore’s highest honour for designers and designs across all disciplines. It recognises the achievements of an extraordinary group of people making a difference to the lives of Singaporeans and the global community through excellent design.

The biennial award was conferred to two Designer of the Year and six Design of the Year recipients this year. This year’s outstanding designs address global challenges such as climate change and sustainability, dementia and caregiving, consumerism and circularity on a fundamental and systemic level, demonstrating how Singapore is producing its own best practices in design that are relevant to improving lives around the world.

The awarded designers and works will be featured in the library@orchard before moving to other locations around Singapore. For more information about the P*DA 2023 travelling exhibition, please visit pda.designsingapore.org.

“As we celebrate the exemplary works of the P*DA recipients who have applied their creativity and craft with empathy and care, we also learn how design can create a positive impact on the environment, our economy and the cities we live in.  I hope their contributions will inspire others to create a better world for our future generations,” says Guest of Honour and patron of the P*DA, President Halimah Yacob.

The P*DA is presented in two categories: Designer of the Year and Design of the Year.

The P*DA 2023 Designer of the Year award was presented to two outstanding Singaporean designers:

Leonard Ng Keok Poh, Country Market Director, Henning Larsen, APAC. In a career spanning over two decades, landscape architect Leonard Ng is pivotal in Singapore’s drive towards becoming a ‘City in Nature’, creating inspirational designs that balance the needs of humans, other species, and the environment.

Ar. Tan Kay Ngee, Principal Architect, Kay Ngee Tan Architects: Architect Tan Kay Ngee finds sources of design inspiration everywhere, from traditional creative forms to everyday life. His diverse design approach has produced an eclectic body of architectural work, which sits alongside an extensive portfolio of writing about art, architecture, and the city.

Six projects were awarded the P*DA 2023 Design of the Year for making a significant difference through one or more of these four impact areas: enabling economic transformation; raising quality of life; advancing Singapore brand, culture and community; and making ground-breaking design achievements:

CapitaSpring, by Bjarke Ingels Group, in collaboration with RSP Architects Planners & Engineers (Pte) Ltd and Carlo Ratti Associati: At 51 storeys, CapitaSpring is one of the tallest buildings in Singapore. It is also one of the greenest. The mixed-use development’s multi-level green spaces offer a new social realm for the community to come together – be it at the ground level, on a verdant and meandering sky terrace at its mid-point, or at a rooftop urban farm.

Hack Care: Tips and Tricks for a Dementia-friendly Home, by Lekker Architects and Lanzavecchia + Wai: It may look like a furniture and homeware catalogue, but the 244-page guide offers practical tips and tricks for hacking existing furniture and products, outlining how anyone can easily turn their home into one that is friendly to persons with dementia. 

R for Repair, by Hans Tan Studio: Curatorial project R for Repair redesigned the banal act of repairing into an inspiring and creative endeavour. Presented together in an exhibition, a wide range of repaired objects and repair kits presented a counterpoint to today’s consumerist culture, and showed how desirable sustainability can be.

Singapore Pavilion, Expo 2020 Dubai, by WOHA Architects Pte Ltd: Amidst the desert, the Singapore Pavilion at the World Expo in Dubai was a multi-dimensional garden of lush greenery. The self-sufficient pavilion showcased a seamless integration of nature, architecture, and technology. The biophilic environment demonstrated how buildings and cities can be designed systemically to meet net-zero targets and support regeneration.

State Courts Towers, by Serie + Multiply Consultants Pte Ltd in collaboration with CPG Consultants Pte Ltd: The State Courts Towers complex reinvents the classical image of courthouses for contemporary times with an unconventional high-rise form. The split towers and open-facade design retain the customary need to segregate user groups, and the ochre-coloured cladding pays homage to the surrounding terracotta roofscape of Chinatown.

Tebet Eco Park, by SIURA Studio Pte Ltd: A degraded public park in South Jakarta has been transformed into a natural asset that better manages flooding and is embraced by the local community. It represents a successful prototype for a more nature-based, sustainable, and regenerative approach to parks in Jakarta.

Discover more at pda.designsingapore.org/presidents-design-award/award-recipients

ORGANISER

The DesignSingapore Council and The Urban Redevelopment Authority

The DesignSingapore Council’s (Dsg’s) vision is for Singapore to be an innovation-driven economy and a loveable city by design. As the national agency that promotes design, our mission is to develop the design sector, help Singapore use design for innovation and growth, and make life better in this UNESCO Creative City of Design. Dsg is a subsidiary of the Singapore Economic Development Board.

For more information, please visit designsingapore.org.

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is Singapore’s land use planning and conservation agency. Our mission is ‘to make Singapore a great city to live, work and play’. We strive to create an endearing home and a vibrant city through long-term planning and innovation, in partnership with the community.

URA’s multi-faceted role includes being the main government land sales agent. We attract and channel private capital investments to develop sites that support planning, economic and social objectives. We also partner the community to enliven our public spaces to create a car-lite, people-friendly and liveable city for all to enjoy. In shaping a distinctive city, URA also promotes architecture and urban design excellence.

For more information, please visit ura.gov.sg.

CONTACT

Name: P*DA Secretariat
Email Address: pda@designsingapore.org