During second year of Interior Design at UCLan, there is an amazing opportunity to go on an international study trip to Singapore to visit NAFA which is the academy we are partnered with over there. It is a subsidised trip that lasts around 5 days and it was one of the most incredible trips I have been on and has definitely helped me with my studies at UCLan. I had to apply for this trip and write to the university to say why I should be chosen to go and what I wanted to get from the trip and I was lucky enough to be accepted to go.
The trip was in late march of 2017 and we flew from Manchester with Emirates, the experience started with the flight and how the design of the plane was so well considered. It was a very long flight but enjoyable and definitely worth it. We stayed in a Carlton hotel and the interior design was really great with carefully chosen lighting in the lobby, to pieces of art and sculptures dotted around the hotel and of course with incredible views over Singapore. We arrived late at night and so it was only in the morning that we got to see our surroundings properly and it was unlike any place I had seen before. As it’s a very highly developed city state it has all the high rise buildings you would expect but it is also very green with gardens half way up a building or on the top of them and every street is lined with high trees and grass everywhere. It of course makes sense as Singapore is hot and humid with quite a bit of rain as we found out whilst over there, but the amount of plants was still quite a shock.
On the first day we went to visit NAFA for the first time and we met Ron who really looked after us during our trip and showed us around the NAFA buildings and also other parts of Singapore. We saw some of the NAFA buildings and a lot of the work produced from different design disciplines and to see the quality of work from the students was amazing and motivating. The building itself was really nice and open and again the views were incredible but it really was the work of the students that stood out at the academy. We also got to see inside their workshops which were very varied in the subjects they were teaching and also there room full of samples, which jam packed full of every type of interior sample you could need. Whilst at NAFA on the first day we went to the Toast Box which was built inside the NAFA building and was very cool and a great place for students to go to and it is also where we first realised that toast is really quite a big thing in Singapore. So we ate toast and drank Milo, a cold chocolatey drink that tastes like Nesquik, amazing.
After NAFA on the first day we went to Little India, a part of Singapore thats full of markets and little shops and shop houses alongside beautiful temples. It is such a colourful place and we just wandered around seeing what we could find and not really having a plan on where we were going which was lovely because we stumbled upon side streets and artwork and temples. There was great architecture and design here which was completely different to the area in which our hotel was and seeing how they used the small amount of space they had was brilliant. The temple had elaborate details and was a stark contrast to the big, bold and quite plain high risers of the inner city area.
On our way back from Little India we visited a huge market selling all sorts of clothes, gifts and food. It was so busy and interesting to see yet another part of Singapores culture. From there we went to the National Design Centre where we got to see loads of work a lot of which based on Singapore and a huge exhibition of the homes of Singapore which was great to see the normal houses of Singapore instead of the architecture and designs of commercial buildings. It was a good interior space as expected from a design centre but the work inside was inspiring and showed me better ways to present my work going into third year. To end the first day we went to get food at a type of food hall which had loads of sweet and savoury food which all looked delicious.
On our second visit to NAFA we got to spend more time in the classes and sit in on a feedback lesson between a tutor and some pupils. This was a really interesting day at NAFA to see how they taught the students and what they covered in lessons and to see how the students worked. During the small sessions the students were really questioned and pushed with their ideas which i thought was a good way to get the students to justify their designs and push themselves to be more creative. In the lesson we sat in on the teacher talked about building a business and about businesses once the students had completed university which is similar to what we are now doing in our Professional Practise class at UCLan. Then once we had finished at NAFA we walked over to LASALLE to see the architecture and design there. LASALLE is a college of arts in Singapore which has an incredible building that has a very square black outer wall but has an open section through the centre which is stunning. It is a tall structure with geometric edges and a lot of glass with black edging and astroturf in the very middle. It really represents what the building is used for and I think we all took a lot from the building in terms of use of space and also how to leave empty spaces for effect.
We went to the Art and Science Museum at Marina Bay after LASALLE to see the light exhibitions there. It was great to see the use of lights in different settings. There was a room with a screen all the way around which was showing waves moving, flowing around the room with music playing. It was really calming and relaxing which was so different to some of the other rooms some of which had moveable blocks and balls, all lit up with different colours which encouraged interaction and play. One of the most incredible rooms though was a room that had strings of lights from floor to ceiling with mirrors on each wall and a pathway through the middle. As a viewer you could control the lights and change the direction of lights and colour which made the experience different for each person going through the lights. This was an exciting space and very personal to people, each experience was different but equally beautiful. The spaces were very immersive and stunning and really interesting to see how light, the movement of light and placement of light affected the users moods and actions.
We continued to explore the Marina Bay area and ventured to the Gardens by the Bay and the Cloud Forest. The Cloud Forest was similar to the Eden Centre which I have already been to but much bigger inside and the waterfall in the Cloud Forest is the biggest indoor waterfall. It was on such a large scale but is something that ca be used in terms of layout and having focal points and as a learning tourist attraction I think it works really well. It has a centre structure which creates this flow of traffic around the space naturally that you make your way up, the shapes and views from the space are incredible and the space makes the most of these. We then stayed there until it was time to see the ‘trees’ at the Gardens by the Bay light up and it was spectacular to see. The trees themselves were intricate and looked more impressive in person than imagined but then when the show started and they all lit up in different colours to music they just got better. This was also an attraction that worked really well in terms of flow of traffic and how tourists use the space. There was a path through the trees leading from the Cloud Forest to the Marina Bay Sands hotel all progressively getting bigger and it was easy to navigate even with almost all tourists looking p to the trees and hotel. As we walked through the hotel space we fully realised how big this building was. It can be seen from many points in the city and it towers above most other buildings but it is surrounded by other huge buildings so its only when you get inside you fully appreciate the scale.
The penultimate day was probably the longest and most tiring day of the trip. We started in China Town which was again a really colourful space and seeing ore shop houses with the high rise building in the background showed the contrasts in Singapore brilliantly. We visited more markets and saw how these small pockets of communities transformed areas to their own cultures and traditions which is what Singapore is about I think. It isn’t just a place with one specific culture but a multicultural space without a clear identity which has become its identity in a way. This was something that became clearer as this day went on and we had plenty of time to think and talk about it on our way to the Henderson Waves bridge. It was a long walk and a very testing time for us as a group. The time it took was definitely worth it and was a time we all bonded and I think that is what is important to mention about this journey. We got lost, found our way again and spent the whole time asking ‘how much longer to go?’. We got to see the natural jungle area of Singapore on a scale similar to that of the manmade area that we had only seen so far. This for me was the epitome of Singapore, it really showed the scale of design with the stark contrasts that Singapore has. The bridge showed perfectly how a practicality can be designed to have multiple purposes and be a work of art.
That night we walked around to find a place to eat and found the Singapore river and wondered about and got to the buildings at night and the landmarks we had seen during the day all lit up at night. They looked completely different and was a nice way to spend our final night, not really having a plan but just exploring and seeing what we found. After this we had our last day which we spent at the beach, there was no sun but it was hot and we did still see plenty of design as we had to make our way through Sentosa.
We eventually made our way home and we could all agree that Singapore is incredible and amazing and I will go back at every opportunity I have. We saw so much and learned so much and is an experience I won’t forget. It has helped me in my studies and motivated me massively to do better and inspired me to think on a larger scale. Singapore is an exciting place to visit and I have so much more to see of it. This was a very long blog post and I still don’t think I included everything I wanted to but I have some videos showing the time there and I have more to come which shows Singapore and what we did better.
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