After taking a break last year, the President’s Design Award is back. This year’s event at the Istana saw, for the first time, President Halimah Yacob presenting the award to two Designer of the Year and nine Design of the Year recipients.
And that’s not the only breakthrough in terms of gender role for the night. As one of few female leaders of a top architectural firm in Asia, Angelene Chan became the first female architect to be awarded Designer of the Year, as deliberated by a 17-member panel for the President’s Design Awards 2018. The CEO of DP Architects shares the same accolade with Hans Tan, founder of Hans Tan Studio, for his work in product and industrial design.
As for the Design of the Year projects that were honoured, winners came from various fields — from visual communication, exemplified by design consultancy Fuelfor and the National Council of Social Service’s ‘Who Cares? Transforming the Caregiving Experience in Singapore’ campaign; to engineering design, such as Singapore University of Technology and Design’s free-form The Future of Us pavilion at Gardens by the Bay. Singapore’s hospitality sector has also been positively impacted by outstanding design: The Warehouse Hotel by Asylum Creative and Oasia Hotel Downtown by WOHA Architects both received a President’s Design Award for Design of the Year.
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Organised by the DesignSingapore Council and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the President’s Design Award 2018 also unveiled a new trophy, which was designed by Nathan Yong, the 2008 President’s Design Award’s Designer of the Year. All eleven winners were selected from 131 eligible entries.
A multimedia exhibition was also on display during the event, which revealed the thinking, planning, processes and outcomes of this year’s winning works through video interviews, stories and photo montages.
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Click on the images below to see some highlights as well as who was in attendance at this year’s prestigious award ceremony, held at the Istana.