PLYSTUDIO has moved

For those of you following our blog, we are pleased to announce the migration of PLYSTUDIO's web and blog content to here. While we are still fixing some bugs and finetuning the site, do visit and let us know what you think.

As such, this blogger site will gradually be no longer used for any PLYSTUDIO content.

Again, many thanks to our readers out there.

Saporiti Italia

Recently we have been privileged and honored to be selected as one of the Singapore-based design practices to participate in the Saporiti Italia Design Award - 'The Luxury Towers' project.

This is an invited competition organised by Saporiti Italia with the scope of 'promoting the development of cultural and technical relations between the Italian and Singaporean design communities. The brief is to conceive of a collection of furniture objects aimed to contain luxury objects. The issues at hand hinges on the perceptions of the consumer mass market in the luxury goods segment and what is 'globally' perceived as luxury.

Saporiti Italia, a leading italian furniture and design company has produced some of the most advanced and leading furniture products for various illustrious clients. Saporiti Italia has a long history of working with architects and designers to develope new products and this award is no different in trying to forge a meaningful collaboration. This is the Saporiti Italia showroom in Singapore, where the competition briefing was held a few days back.

[Image by Saporiti Italia]

We will be cracking our heads on this one in due course.

May Updates

Its time to catch up on the blog again after last few weeks of meetings, design presentations and site coordination works on various projects on the work front.

Things are looking really busy for us. This month, 2 more of our interior projects started on site, we got some new jobs in the pipeline (1 more residential small apartment interiors and 2 commercial food and beverage shops) and possibly, a new standalone bridge structure to be designed and built. Will try and post some images of the work soon.

Of Stars and Stripes, Flowers and What Nots

I'm sure for the local readers out there, you must have seen these two buildings that were recently completed.

The top is the Iluma Shopping Center at Bugis and the bottom is Wilkie Edge at Selegie. Surfacing amidst the arts and civic district are these 2 new trendy buildings designed by the same architecture firm, and possibly one of the most successful local practices today.

We took a walk inside Wilkie Edge recently and this was what we saw.

Stripey floorsOrganically shaped ceiling cutoutsFloor and ceiling effects coming togetherCeiling ceiling everywhere

Perhaps these buildings need to be appreciated at the urban scale; we've read with interest its attempt to break out of standard building typologies, its integration of climatic considerations and greenery and its response to street level activities. At the building scale, the direction seems to be that of a firm trying to redefine its own design language, at both the formal level as well as at the level of building ornamentation albeit manifested through exquisite construction details. Though we have not been inside the Iluma yet we would be trying to make a visit soon. Can we expect more of the above? Or perhaps more flowers in the vein of another one of their creations, the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

On d+a

Our projects J-Loft and the apartment at The Sail have been published on local and regional architectural and design magazine d+A, Issue 49, 2009. Entitled 'Shaped by Architectural Meaning' we think the article aptly describes what we at PLYSTUDIO are preoccupied with, the critical thoughts that define what we do, the questions on prevailing types and contexts we are operating in.

Many thanks to the editor and writer for the critical review. We can only agree with the writer on the last paragraph...'good design is never a single good answer but will always ask good questions'.