As part of the Singapore Design Week, we set up a display at the Singapore Science Park with some materials from our studio. It was interesting to respond to the theme of “Reinvention”, because on the surface, we felt it was somewhat contrary, since often our practice with nature looks into traditional technologies. Is it still reinvention if it’s based on hand-driven, traditional methods?

One of the lessons we learnt through these years is that many of these hand-driven methods and ways of working with land are already circular when we use what is available and abundant in our environment. Staying open to the material possibilities and outcomes, using small and slow methods (a principle from permaculture as well), we can still aspire to have a studio where what we make can go back to compost and feed the land that provided, in an urban environment. Sustainability as a big word becomes more tangible in action as we learn how natural colours and papers were made, often through localizing, simplifying, leveraging on natural elements, and exchanging some of our own labour, time and care.