The Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA) presents the highly-anticipated annual Singapore Archifest for its 17th iteration starting late September this year. Directed by Calvin Chua, Archifest 2023 warmly welcomes you to “Interim: Acts of Adaptation”– an invitation to rethink our built environment as continually being in a state of transition. Presenting itself as a lab, this edition of Archifest investigates the potential of adaptive architecture as the mode of action in response to pressing environmental, cultural, and technological change.
Evident in its planning and policy language, Singapore is no stranger to the “interim” with its range of discrete, stopgap interventions facilitating the transformation of our city. As our urban landscape matures and navigates an increasingly volatile world, we can no longer afford to remain uneasy about the necessity of continual change. By challenging existing approaches to the construction of our built environment, “Interim” prompts architects and stakeholders to explore a constant, incremental evolution of the city, which can empower us to anticipate and better manage the uncertainty evoked by broader social and ecological circumstances.
Festival Director Calvin Chua states,
“The city is a testbed, with architects as agents of change. This year’s festival is a lab for experimenting and demonstrating the ‘interim’.”
The young and diverse curatorial team, seeks to present visitors and fellow practitioners with a newer, different approach to the festival as a vessel of urban discourse. A dynamic line-up of festival programmes includes the headliner main conference and exhibition, which showcases emerging local and regional architects’ interpretations of the festival theme. In addition, Archifest 2023 will also feature new programmes such as incubator design workshops examining pressing issues facing the built environment, residencies hosted which invite emerging architects and practitioners from the region to participate in ongoing conversations, as well as salon sessions to facilitate interactions between a variety of curated, diverse professional voices and perspectives.
In the spirit of its theme, “Interim” expands from a centralised festival experience by embedding meaningful architectural discourse into the physical landscape of the city. In place of a pavilion, Archifest 2023 reimagines the festival’s traditional centrepiece as multiple accessible urban objects to be inserted at various areas around the festival site. A series of urban installations, designed by young architects, designers and artists, and supported by URA’s Lively Places Fund, establishes the festival’s physical presence through a dispersed activation of the historical and characterful Kampong Gelam district. These installations represent the potential ability of adaptive interventions to impress upon the physical landscape of the city beyond their footprints and lifetimes.
Kampong Gelam’s rich and layered history forms an interim urban trace of Singapore’s national development, providing the festival with an apt foundation for conversations surrounding urban transformation to be built upon. The dialogues born from the heart of the festival in Kampong Gelam will then further extend to other satellite sites via a suite of festival programming, thereby involving a greater range of stakeholders in broader discourse.
Bringing together leading voices from the industry, the Archifest Conference is a consistent highlight of Archifest. This year’s edition of the Archifest Conference assembles a line-up of global and local speakers each with a distinctive approach working in diverse contexts. This year’s Conference focuses on amplifying the conversations around the applications of an “Interim” thinking in architecture and the city, with an emphasis not on a flat showcase of works, but on the cross-pollination of ideas, methods and visions.
The speaker lineup include:
● Ma Yansong, MAD Architects
● Andra Matin, andramatin
● Momoyo Kaijima, Atelier Bow-Wow
● Teo Yee Chin, Red Bean Architects
● Craig Miller, Heatherwick Studio
● Betty Ng, COLLECTIVE
● Dongwoo Yim, PRAUD
● Freek Persyn, 51N4E
● Sarah Ichioka, Desire Lines
● Danny Wicaksono, studiodasar
We invite fellow industry professionals to participate in this collective endeavour to explore the “interim” as a new paradigm of architecture, in hopes of shaping a more resilient and sustainable future.
For more information on Archifest and event ticketing details, visit the official Singapore Archifest 2023 website at https://archifest.sg/ and social pages at https://www.instagram.com/archifest/ and https://www.facebook.com/archifest.
Title
Singapore Archifest 2023: Interim: Acts of AdaptationType
Festival / BiennialWebsite
Organizers
From
September 29, 2023 07:00 PMUntil
October 28, 2023 11:00 PMVenue
SingaporeAddress