Brewin Design Office was briefed to renovate and convert the National Gallery Singapore’s Rotunda dome into a gallery library and archives to house the museum’s collection of 20,000 physical and digital resources – one of the world’s most comprehensive – on 19th- and 20th-century Southeast Asian art. The challenge was to revive the Rotunda’s historical function, and create a space that is simultaneously contemporary and historical, all without disrupting the sightline of visitors into the impressive inner dome. The joinery work was fabricated by both local and international cabinet makers, alongside bespoke and carefully restored historical furniture.
Brewin Design Office partnered with auction house Phillips to design a section of the latter’s Fall Sales Preview, which would be furnished with a selection of furniture and art from the Day Sale. A specially commissioned paint – Pantone 405-C by Robert Cheng – was paired with warm greys and mirrors to both visually extend the length of the room and to create portals. The subtle simplicity of the design created an unusually meditative quality that allowed the pure form and beauty of each piece in the sale collection to be individually spotlighted.
The first of its kind in South East Asia, the ‘Minimalism: Space. Light. Object’ exhibition brought together over 110 Minimalist art pieces. The brief was to both frame the artwork on an individual level, and to express a cohesive narrative that strings together the different pieces across time and cultures. Drawing on the artistic principles of Minimalism, Brewin infused the design with nods to proportion and geometric logic.
‘Now Is Not the Time’ is an immersive art exhibition that merges virtual production, Artificial Intelligence, generative art, architecture, sculpture, film and music, in collaboration with the talented artist Daniel Arsham, virtual production and animation studio X3D, and various other contributors, that pays homage to Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew on the occasion of his 100th birthday.
Brewin Design Office contributed to this historically significant exhibition by designing “Building Blocks”, a warren of fabric-walled rooms of varying heights and square footage that evokes the emotional life of a city, its challenges and its triumphs.
Building Blocks is very much a physical environment paving a journey for the visitor, providing an experience that relies on spatial, volumetric, and perspectival design. An abstract metaphor of the urban development that Singapore has gone through over the past 5 decades, we created a series of translucent rooms through the use of gradated tonal fabrics and artificial lighting that allows the audience to journey through variations of scales and transparencies. The installation transcends the boundaries of both temporality and spatiality, serving as a physical rendition of a journey through time and history.
