The Desire for Design in 1960s Singapore

In the 1950s, the island of Singapore was a British Crown Colony. As colonial administrators began their plans to unify and decolonize their territories in Southeast Asia, they recognised a potential problem with Singapore’s economy. Although it was the richest city in the region, Singapore’s wealth was almost entirely built on trade; should this trade have receded or shifted elsewhere it would spell disaster. Therefore, beginning in the 1950s and continuing throughout the 1960s, a policy was implemented to diversify the Singaporean economy by establishing local manufacturing industries. These eventually led to new industrial settlements on the island and introduction of new types of urbanised work.

This paper charts the Singaporean government’s efforts to remake their economic future during the same period in which they traversed the processes of decolonisation. Drawing from political speeches, newspapers, government reports and promotional grey literature, the paper looks at the ways in which the state expressed its ambitions regarding industry, technical training, design and product development. This focuses attention on the period after the Industrial Promotion Board’s founding in 1957, and follows the subsequent development of polytechnic education in architecture and engineering, the Industrial Research Unit, the Jurong Town Corporation and the Product and Design Centre. The material demonstrates the country’s first efforts to organise and promote ideas about design as a means of strengthening the economy, as well as its internal strategies to create a manufacturing workforce that could engage with globalised industrial product design. Through this, the paper addresses a significant example of mid-twentieth century industrialisation in the postcolonial world.