Designing the Unseen
Designing the Unseen looks at how the simplest objects in our lives quietly shape the way we relate to one another. We rarely think about the things we touch every day, yet they choreograph our movements, routines, and the small social moments that hold a community together. This project starts with a simple question that becomes more complex the longer you sit with it: what if we redesign the familiar so that it creates opportunities for us to interact with one another again?
Workshop participants testing out an interactive broom, SDE CAFE @ NUS School of Architecture
The residency builds on an earlier project, The Mundane Redesigned (2023), where a set of brooms required two people to sweep together. The broom stopped being just a cleaning tool and became a social prompt. It turned an everyday task into an encounter. That work suggested something important: small inconveniences can draw people closer. Community might grow not from ease, but from friction, from the effort of doing something together.
In this residency, Designing the Unseen begins by exploring a simple tool kit. What if we add verbs to objects, what happens if a newspaper + gather, a bottle + toss, a walking stick + invite. These added actions are not upgrades or features. They are questions. They lead people to imagine new possibilities for the things they already use, and to notice how design can nudge them toward or away from others.
From November to December, a small group of co-creators from different backgrounds came together for four creative labs. Each person starts with a personal object, such as an educator’s red pen, a newspaper, a hair clip, a bottle, or an elderly walking stick. Through play, sketching, conversation, and low-fidelity prototyping, they rethink these objects from the inside out. The labs are designed to make visible the small gestures and micro-habits that shape how people pass, wait, sit, or stand beside one another in shared spaces. It is a hands-on attempt to bring back a sense of mutual awareness into routines that usually run on autopilot.
