Shared Future | Agents of Change

Held in the URA building on the 15th March 2016, Shared Future | Agent of Change seminar was attended by around 100 people. The seminar was a part of an exhibition organized by MKPL Architects called "Homegrown: A Singaporean Design Consciousness" as its closing forum. There are four interviewees in this seminar: Kelly Cheng, Jevier Perez, Pan YiCheng and Karen Tan. The seminar talked about their projects and how it develops and changes.

Kelly Cheng, the founder of The Press Room, a design and publish consultant, says that client and designer relation needs to be nurtured overtime as clients are the one who helps to build a brand. We need to be realistic and try to develop relationship while developing ourselves as well as the market around us. Also, when we try to do something new we need to deal with failures so that we can know what we are good at so we can do better the next time.

Following Kelly's view, YiCheng, the owner of a fabricating company called Produce, tells his history in creating his firm. He said that he started by working on private project. He wanted to work in fabrication and create new solutions to realize designs with lower costs than hat a traditional carpenter does. In order to grow bigger, they started to expand their facility by adding new machines and reducing manpower. In three years, they have succeeded in adding more clients and they are hoping to make Produce as a platform with other designers that can be used for research.

Then in the talk, Javier Perez also talks about the lounge that he designed and owned, Kilo Lounge. The business has grown better than what he had expected. He wishes that the place will be a spot for people to communicate within, not just a lifestyle. Kilo Lounge is his first lounge project that is built in an old shop house. He himself was quite surprised when URA accepted his proposal to create a club in a shop house even though it should be within some regulations. He hopes to keep bringing things to live and recycling by reinventing designs.

Lastly, Karen Tan also stated that we must start try doing new things and taking its risks. People need to be more open minded to adapt to change that always happens around us. Overall, the seminar's topic is interesting but sometimes what they are talking about cannot be heard by the audience because of technical difficulties such as mics that are not properly on.

#seminar #singapore #interiordesign