Through the Lens of Design

Wendy So… we're gonna embark on this… we can't say too much, but I would say… you know, there are so many senior daycare centres and senior activity centres, and one of the ways to attract seniors to go to these places is to turn them into a sort of cafe style, like another kopitiam; they look like a kopitiam, but still, you will still have seniors who don’t wanna go because it's associated to certain social care and healthcare services.

And so what we are trying to do is to flip that and to, instead of thinking about bringing the seniors to the centre and making it look like one of those neighbourhood places. To make them feel like they are going to one of the neighbourhood places and from there, try to insert services there, in a way that is not so like, “we're coming here to help you”. Because seniors don't necessarily need our help, you know, and it's about how they can flourish in their golden years, and still be contributing all the wisdom and experiences that they have. So it's in some ways a project about redefining ageing.

Wendy Yeah. It's about hacking the urban spaces that are around us, and making it work for the community.

Wendy I would say one to two years. Yeah. Because we are gonna be working closely with the seniors and we'll co-create solutions with them and it's really gonna go in the direction that they will be co-driving because in the end, this is something that is community-driven and the community kind of, should lead. Yeah. So we will let their voices lead us.

I would say that we started entering the community-related sort of design sphere where there's a lot co-creative placemaking and, and participatory methodology ever since we started working with Drama Box and Artswok Collaborative, who are community arts, theater practitioners on a project called “Both Sides Now”, which was also selected for Venice Biennale, this year currently on show at URA. So that is a project that we've been involved in for three years, but the project actually has lasted for a decade. And it's about entering heartlands to make conversation about end of life issues, no longer taboo. And we were involved in that as a spatial designer, and that really opened our mind to how design can engage with people to talk about really, really important things that can help everyone to kind of make sense of, you know, topics that can be so difficult to grasp.

Wendy Well, actually we started, well, with that in mind already, because we were already doing community-related work from the beginning. And so when we talk about the word sustainability, it was always multi-prong. It's not just about nature and natural places and environments and how to maintain them, but it's also about human habitats and communities. And the truth is if you look at the world, there's always this tension, you know, like if people cannot live well enough, in a good environment, and for sure the environment around them is also gonna be, like polluted and not taken care of. You can't quite look at one without looking at the other. And so if you look at the SDG goals of the UN, they are often looked at together.

Gustavo I think it somehow, for many projects, starts from a product design point of view when it's about the material and environment side of it. So we think from products, and the last few projects we did is, uh, a product that then becomes a system. So it goes from a product to a system, and at the end of the day, it's a whole experience for customers. So you really realise that as much as you care about material uses and, you know, longevity, you still need the products to be nice and appealing and beautiful for people to experience, to be better for people to buy into. These are the few things that we always have in mind, when we approach a new project, in sustainability.

Wendy Yeah. I would say circular design methods would be one area that we're very focused on and that goes back to understanding the entire product life cycle of products. So it is still rooted in our industrial design background, even though our practice has become very interdisciplinary. There's also one part of our interests that lies in material research, and how we can work with material labs, to, you know, design products from the latest materials and try to understand more about how those materials even work. Yeah. So those are our interests because of our product design background.

Wendy We're always searching for new materials to play with.

Gustavo Oh, sometimes it's existing materials. I know plastic, for example, is almost like a forbidden word in sustainability, but if it is used well, and if it's made in a way that ensures that it will not be disposed of before the end of life or before it degrades, then some plastic is fine. It's not bad. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be all new materials or all biomaterials. It's about understanding the context they need, and whether it's longevity or whether it's durability. And there's a lot of variables that we have to take into consideration.

Wendy Yeah. It's like our user behaviour and psychology, right. So when we did this one year class, almost two years of research on food delivery, what really interests us is how do you form habits that are more sustainable… we did a survey and almost 90% of the people would prefer to have a more sustainable lifestyle and less disposable. But, you know, they would often forget.

And, then the next question was about, why don't they bring their bottles and forgetting to bring was one of the top reasons. Even just thinking about putting a container near the front entrance, or instead of being in your pantry, may be one way to remind yourself to bring it. And in terms of reuse systems, it's also interesting to understand what makes people return the containers that are supposed to cycle within the system. Because it only works if you remember to return it. And so it goes back to user psychology and behaviour that goes beyond the product itself. That is also super interesting for us.

Wendy Yeah. Ideally. I mean, in this case, because it's a very new area that we were venturing into. So we need to put in the time to do the research. For many of the community-centric projects, the client also understands that ethnographic research is necessary to even understand what the real needs are.

Wendy Haha…

Gustavo Yeah. And now and then we take our time to do projects we believe in and do them in a way that we think is meaningful. So you can skip the research stage for this kind of project because at the end of the day, you wouldn't have the data to validate or to move forward with if you have to manufacture something or produce something at scale or convince that that change is necessary to other stakeholders. So that – the design phase is critical to get that data.

Wendy Yeah. So actually going back to one of the earlier questions about how we have evolved since we started Forest & Whale in 2016 – I mean, when you start out and say, okay, I'm gonna be doing this, this is what I'm about, then it's different from what you were practicing before. It's not like immediately you're gonna have clients … (thunder in the background) there was a loud sound...

Wendy Oh really? Is it raining heavily?

Wendy Wow. That was really loud.

So going back to one of the first questions you asked, which is how we have evolved since 2016 and the truth is when you recalibrate and you decide, okay, this is what we are about. It's a bit different from what we were doing before and this is the kind of new projects that we wanna attract, clients that we’ve not worked with before that we wanna attract. It's not gonna happen immediately. You're gonna have to put in the time, the resources for a couple of years, to do it yourself first so that you can prove that, okay, this is something that we can do before clients will start knocking at your door. And that's how it is. We always see it as... when you run a practice, you need your bread and butter projects, but you will always need to put in time for the projects that you really care about as well.

And I think when we recalibrate our studio, the idea was to make the gap between these two smaller so that the bread butter is also the project that we care about, you know, and not to have such a big disparity between the two.

Wendy I think we were very fortunate. Like there were a lot of projects that just kind of came in that we were able to pivot them to work where we would like to go. And one of them was… museum work that we were doing. Because museum work, with curation, you can really bring in a lot of ideas. So all the research that we were already doing, we were able to pour into the exhibitions that we were curating. And the museum director that we're working with was also very open to hear what we can, what we would like to craft in terms of the narrative. So that was a really good transition period, I would say.

Wendy It's something that we love a lot… we work a lot with the Red Dot Design Museum, which as you know, is a museum of products, right? Industrial products, also communication design. And so we're dealing with the content of the exhibition, which are products that we love. We love to design such products and we love to study them and understand why they are admired for their industrial [strengths], like function and form. And a lot of our work involves curating the narratives for people who come to the museum to understand why these products are good designs, and what kind of future they paint for people.

So one of the exhibitions we designed for the Singapore Art Museum, for example, is called “Human-Nature”, where we looked at all the collections of robotics – robots and AI-related products, products related to big data such as your Fitbit, you know, and we created an exhibition, which is about how humans have to coexist, with all these… in this computer age.

And, it's already happening around us. You know, you already have robots… we can outsource parenting too. They read books to the child; you have a crib that can rock the baby to sleep. So you don't have to wake up in the middle of the night to cuddle. So there're so many very intrinsic abilities of humans that we are outsourcing to robots. And when you can see in the exhibition setting, then you can really understand that. Okay, do I wanna outsource those things? And as we outsource more of those skills, what, where, where will we go? You know, what kind of future are we gonna be working towards?

Wendy Yeah. And yeah, it's, it's super interesting to kind of have one foot looking at more speculated futures.

Wendy Okay. Gustavo, you can go.

Gustavo I think for me when I was young, there was one thing I was really passionate about… cars. So initially I wanted to be a car designer. This was when I was, I dunno, around 10 to 12. I wanted to be a car designer. So I was always designing from that standpoint later on.

I realised that cars are a bit limiting. So I found industrial design as a career. That gave me the opportunity to be creative and, and solve problems, not just within cars, but you know, other spheres. Yeah, I think that's how I… that's the initial interest I had in design, from cars, and…

Wendy Vehicles. And, and until today you're still passionate about cars.

Wendy I don't know… actually, sometimes I wonder why… my mum is a seamstress so I grew up going with her to People’s Park, choosing materials for the clothes that she has to sew. So I've had a childhood where I'm very closely associated with rituals of craft and materials, but I didn't choose fashion, somehow I think product design interests me more.

But now, I mean, I'm, again back in the university and for me, I really see design as a lens. So I'm doing a Masters that is interdisciplinary, cutting across natural science, humanities and media technologies, through the lens of design. And that for me is actually what the definition of design is. You know, it is almost like a lens to look at all the other fields and that's why it's so exciting. Right. Because you kind of can study the other fields and then look at it through the lens of design to see how you can make it meaningful and relevant to people. So that's why I still enjoy being a designer today.

Wendy Well, it means I can be, like a young learner again, asking a lot of questions that may be naïve. But it's always the naive questions that lead to very interesting discoveries.

For example, I'll be taking a laboratory lesson on microbiology. And from there, we are looking at different ways, different proteins and enzymes, enzymes are proteins… so nowadays I talk about these things to Gustavo and he's like, uh, what are you talking about? And so then I start to understand how to read scientific publications, you know, because before that when I look at them online, I have no idea what I was reading. So then I was reading one, for example, on PETase, which is an enzyme that they have discovered that can actually break down PET plastic. And then Gustavo, at the same time, he wasn't looking at this, but he was telling me that… there's been this podcast that he’s been listening to where they're talking about the future of plastic – is not to avoid plastic, but to actually use plastic that can be digested. And I was like, oh yeah, I was just reading this scientific problem, you know, and to be able connect the dots like that is just incredible. That you go beyond design to make those connections.

Wendy Yeah. A lot of exploration, once you can look at it from a biological way of understanding, how actually the cellular breakdown happens or how the material can grow like mushrooms. And yeah, super interesting.

Wendy Yeah. We're gonna be based in Berlin. And I think Gustavo is also very excited because of being here, the hub of, you know, a lot of sustainable practices and startups.

Gustavo Yeah. We have some projects that’s going on in Singapore, so we may fly back and forth a few times, but yeah, I think…to stay until, I don't know, maybe middle of next year, at least in Europe.

Gustavo Well, Europe is very interesting for us, especially when it comes to sustainability because they are probably at the forefront in terms of regulation, but also in terms of general awareness, and how they are used to, whether it's separating rubbish or how keen they are into buying products with no packaging or less packaging. So they are, I think they're years ahead, not just to Singapore, but most of the countries.

And that's very interesting to see how a society works at the forefront of sustainability practices, and also see all the new trends developing in terms of material. There's a lot of funding from the EU to try new materials for packaging and for products. So in that sense, it's very interesting, and at the same time, there's also a very good design, you know, awareness in general. So it's gonna be a very exciting year here. I think there's a lot of things we can still learn or bring back to Singapore and vice versa.

Wendy I think what's amazing is to be able to understand and observe because we are living here now. Everything from the policy changes that were made, because they are so much at the forefront to how that triggers down to the way consumers behave and what you actually find in run-of-the-mill pharmacy stores. So for example, I walk in and I see a lot of solid soaps because they're trying to face out plastic bottles for liquid soaps. And so just seeing that wide variety and spectrum of solid soaps I could choose from is really interesting. And I think these are trends that will eventually proliferate across the world. I think in Singapore, we tend to be a bit more conservative in terms of policy change. You know, it takes a while for certain policies to take effect. But then for us, it’s really interesting to see, like when those policies take place, what is the huge transformation you would see happening in society.

Wendy Exactly.

So yeah, when we were doing our research for Reuse Lab, we realised that the circular economy being such a new word that was coined in Europe is not Western at all. You know, you can find many local examples, back from the Kampong days. And they were practicing circular economy back then.

Wendy Right. So then what is interesting for us is to see how those ideas - when we take them back to Asia - be translated in ways that take on the local tradition, local wisdom that already existed. It is not just a direct transplant, but to actually excavate it in our own path and memories, how we used to do things that were very sustainable.

Wendy Yes

Gustavo I think, especially in Singapore, these solutions have to cater for the way we live there, which is with higher – maybe – standards of hygiene, and convenience, as that’s probably the main deciding factor when you buy something, or when you choose how to use a product. So that – bridging that gap between what people use in Europe as sustainable and how we are used to living in Singapore, I think that's the challenge. And that's where design can be handy and play a role.

Wendy Yeah. Because I would say that, for example, in Europe, maybe people are willing to take on a little bit of inconvenience for something they believe in.

But I would say in Asia, especially in Singapore where productivity and convenience is so prized and things move so fast. You're not gonna wanna go back to a bar of soap that is gonna slip out your hands every time you bathe, haha. Yeah. So how can we design in a way that is still gonna be, you can still take a quick shower and you're not gonna be cursing and swearing in the bathroom and I’m sure that's where design can come in. To look at the whole bathing experience as a ritual – like from making the bar soap yourself. So it may not be just about the product, but also getting people to go back to how things are made. And I think for that, that's actually a lot of interest in Singapore because we're so used to having everything imported. And in this pandemic, I think people see how important it is to be able to make things ourselves as well.

Wendy Yeah for sure. I think we are seeing that in Europe too. Like there's a lot of discussion about going back to local manufacture and what are some local productions that are essential.

Wendy Yeah. Actually that's a project curated by Studio Juju, so you probably will hear more from them.

Wendy So you probably know about the brand that they are creating and they brought in a few local designers to work with the local manufacturers. So we're really excited with what they're doing and we're happy to be part of the first collection.

Wendy Maybe we should ask the outsider (referring to Gustavo). Hahaha, no, no, he's been here for 10 years. He's almost half Singaporean… hahaha…

He's pointing his finger at me. Um, well I think that we have evolved a lot for sure. I mean, when I was a student back then, we were quite aware that in terms of design, we were like a couple of decades behind Taiwan and a couple more decades behind Japan. And everyone was thinking about going to Europe to study or to work because we want greater exposure. We want to go back to where the history of design took place, like in Germany, where Bauhaus came from.

But today I see among my students that many of them are very happy to stay in Singapore. I'm not so sure if there's always a good thing, but you know, the thing is there are so many more opportunities back home that many people are coming back and so I think that is good because it really helps to create a more flourishing industry and scene.

Gustavo I think design has, from the time that I arrived in Singapore in 2010, till now, it has changed a bit in Singapore. And eventually, generally speaking, design will always, develop to service the industry and Singapore being a place where there's no manufacturing or very little manufacturing compared to Taiwan, Japan, China, Europe, US, most countries, it’s natural that in this, especially since design became more relevant maybe 10, 15 years ago. It has developed in a way that is servicing or is more pointed towards the service industry more than the manufacturing. So you see less furniture designers or less product designers and more experience designers – UX, more interaction designers; a lot of designers going into, to work with banks or financial services or hospitals, because that's where the industry is funding creativity.

So in that sense, it is evolving. And that the design is a bit different from what we were doing some time ago. But it's good to see that design is taking over, taking on and more, there are more courses of design than from 10 years… It's helping society at the end of the day.

Gustavo I don't think design manufacturing is gonna come back at scale in a significant way. But again, design has many ways, many forms. Service design will continue to grow because that's what the real economy does. And design has to adapt to what the real economy and the real market needs. For people like us who are old school and we like to design physical objects and furniture, maybe it's not great, but there's still niches of smaller manufacturing, whether it's in Singapore or nearby that requires this kind of product design.

Wendy Yeah. But it's an interesting question because I always felt that it makes a difference when you can see manufacturers in your own country, you can just visit them, you can see a craftsman. And that was how I practiced, you know, when I got out of school, I was visiting craftsmen in Defu Lane and Sungei Kadut, to understand how things are made. And I learned a lot, as much from them, or even more than I learned in a university. And there's a lot of that pass-down knowledge that is gone if you're just emailing someone in a factory in China. And also, what is your unique selling point? Like what would make it unique as a design culture if you don't actually make things locally with certain locally sourced materials or locally found skills, right? So that's on one level.

On another level is the consumer consciousness of the material and how things are made. And I would say like, you know, in Europe and in Japan, where… Europe is too big a word, but you know, if I was living in, Germany or Italy where they have a lot of manufacturers, or Finland, for example, consumers appreciate things that are made in those countries, in their own countries, because they can understand the craft behind it.

For them, it's not just a dollar and cent gig. Because it's not just like, I pay more or less for something like that. Do I get a bargain, but I actually know what I'm paying for. I'm paying for a better piece of wood. I'm paying for a better-crafted object that is supposed to last till the next generation. So I think it's this consumer mindset that is more critical for society because when it's all dollars and cents, then it's really just a use and throw away consumer risk culture. And that's what we see in this pandemic with the rise of e-commerce. The problems that you can create.

Wendy Yeah. But again, as you said before in the past, it wasn't like that. Like our grandparents probably had cabinets that they pass on to the next, to their children and they're like, don't throw this away, it is really good wood…

Wendy Yeah, yeah.

Wendy Yeah. I hope so. Yeah. Right. Definitely.

Wendy So we get to the gossip part now.

Wendy We met as friends and then we decided to work together with other friends and then we got together cause we were hanging out so much at work, I guess. Design does that to you. Cause you worked so long hours that you can only end up with the person that you are working with... Hahaha…

Wendy I think it is to give a lot of respect for space and for each other. Yeah. Not just in terms of time, but in terms of creative space in a project. Yeah.

Gustavo Yeah. Wife is always right. Haha.

Gustavo Um, I don't know. It can be, uh, anything from, from small daily experience to bigger mankind of achievements. When you see things like this revival of the space industry, so many companies spending so much time and effort trying to go back to the moon, or go to mars, this pushing of civilisation forward is inspiring at a certain level.

But then on a daily basis, to see for example here in Germany, how much sustainability there is around, how widespread that is, that’s also very inspiring, to see that it can be achieved, actually happening in many places. I guess, at least for me, coming from Argentina and then living in Europe and Singapore, and having been in many other countries in Asia as well, each society has its own way of living… you will always find small things that are inspiring, that you’ve never seen before, ways of life, types of food, packaging products. It’s a mix of all these things.

Wendy Yeah, I agree with him. Anything that expands the understanding of the world, beyond our lifespan, you know like going far back in history, into the future. I’m super, super, super inspired by all these news about space exploration, because then you really understand our age and time on earth is really so insignificant in the lifespan of the planet and universe.

And then to pick up a book… Recently I was reading a book by Buckminister Fuller that he wrote in the 1970s and he was already talking about earth as a spaceship and why are we still using the words sunrise and sunset, it doesn’t make any sense. If you understand the solar system, sunset should be sunclipse and sunrise should be sunsite. Even playing words like that to redefine our world, I found was super, super inspiring, and it really expands your mind to a longer time continuum.

Gustavo Not much lately…

Wendy Nowadays we are thinking of what would be fun for Lila (daughter). Like hanging out a lot at a playground.

Wendy Yeah, I think that’s what we do for fun, huh. We always find ways to live a dual life. We’re always one foot in Singapore and one foot somewhere else. And that keeps us very agile.

Gustavo Yeah, we do like to spend time in nature. Recently we spent a few months in Argentina, in Patagonia, so we’d go kayaking… horse-riding… this deeper connection with nature is fun, is enriching and relaxing at the same time.

Wendy Yeah, you can talk all you want but in the end, you need to be immersed in nature.

Wendy For me that’s been on hold and I think Gustavo too. I was still teaching last year.

I’ve been teaching for as long as I’ve been practising. So I started teaching in 2009 and I graduated in 2007. I worked for a year and I was put back into teaching. That was how young the industry was then, because there were so many new designing schools popping up that many graduates were pulled back to help, to teach. And it was incredible; I would say that being able to always have one foot in academia is very important to remain mentally and creatively agile because there’s always a limit to how far you can go with industry projects. When we are teaching, we can really speculate futures and we can really be more far off, it’s really fun and I really enjoy it. Also, I learn a lot from my students as well. I do enjoy the process of teaching and how to create creative pedagogy.

Wendy Well, that’s because there’s no limits to the possibility of what you bring to the classroom. So if you were to set a brief on how we are going to live in the future and if you were to speculate 20, 30 years down the road, there’s going to be rising sea levels, could you imagine that we might be living in pods, living underwater, or that you’d be floating. That’s where you can really design habitats, objects and products we’d use that may not even exist today.

Gustavo For me teaching is interesting because, especially when we get older, it kind of keeps me in touch with the new generation and the way they think. I feel that the last few years, with technology and social media and devices, the way people think changes very fast. Whether it is the attention span kids have these days compared to when we were studying… So being in contact with the new generation, 18, 19 year-olds kind of helps you understand and see how their character is changing, what their interests are, adjust the profession to make it in a way that they can accept and understand it.

Wendy Actually in many countries, the connection between academic institutes and the industry is very, very tight. There’s a strong connection, and also government and policy-makers. You see this flow of ideas running through these three spheres and I realised that this is something to be harnessed.

For example, during the pandemic, I was very much in the circle of the museum curators and a lot of the museums were affected. Ten percent were to be completely closed down and all museums were closed, so basically they were suffering in terms of income and traffic. And I thought this was a good moment for designers to come in and say how we can rethink the museum space. So we did that as a project at NUS with my students and we were able to so quickly reinvent what a museum should even be. Who decides what kind of content should be showcased, who deserves a voice – should migrant workers also be able to have a narrative in a public museum space. With the outcome of that project, I was able to share with some people in the museum sphere. They were so inspired by what they saw from the students and they were so interested to support some of those ideas. But what’s more important, for them to see for themselves, how we can pivot and evolve if we are able to jump out of the box. And that’s something you can only do within the platform of academia.

Wendy For me, after Outofstock, or when we were growing Outofstock, it was more of a traditional design studio where we were thinking about growing a team.

But when we started Forest & Whale, it became clearer that it’s about how we can stick as close as possible to what is meaningful and what we care about, and that can become part of our practice. And so as a model of a studio, it has become more of being part of a network of various people we work with. So in all of our projects, that’s what’s happening. It’s almost like mapping out a constellation of various creative workers, as well as social workers, as well as theatre practitioners. We basically work with different people as we do different projects and that’s really how I think we see ourselves going forward. As we enter different industries, we will be working with more diverse stakeholders, and how can we create this larger and wider constellation of creatives and non-creatives who we can work closely with towards our vision of what we care about.