Singapore Pavilion

Conceptualised by curators from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the Singapore Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale celebrated the nation’s 60th anniversary. City-making was reimagined as a dining experience, fusing collective intelligence with innovation. Titled “RASA-TABULA-SINGAPURA”, a play on Tabula Rasa (Latin for blank slate), the name was reinterpreted to evoke Rasa (taste in Malay) and Tabula (table). Subtitled “Celebrating Singapore’s Superdiversity — A Variational City”, the project cast Singapore’s hybridised identity as a table that gathers diverse intelligences shaped by history and geography.

Working in close collaboration with the SUTD team, we distilled their curatorial thinking into the central metaphor of Singapore as a complex manifold, a latent space of convergence where layers of complexity are absorbed and resolved into a legible, seemingly balanced framework. From this centrepoint, divergence occurs. And within Singapore’s seemingly rigid structure lies the potential for fluidity, unfolding into a living, growing expression of superdiversity.

Our key visual expresses this by transforming the exhibition title into a fluid typographic structure, breaking free from inflexibility. Two different typefaces, serif and sans serif, were also used to signal the tension between the planned and unplanned. This identity extended across all materials, from banner drapes and menu cards to posters, invites, and the official website. The pavillion’s website further accentuates this fluidity through a morphing gradient, evoking the divergent energy of superdiversity in motion.

Image Credit: Giulio Boem, Giorgio Schirato Photography