President’s Design Award turns 20: Cute tableware, heartland church and ground-breaking S’pore design

SINGAPORE – A caster board, a heartland church and tableware that pays homage to Singapore without looking like a kitschy souvenir.

What do these three very different things have in common? They are all President’s Design Award (PDA) winners, recognised for showcasing the best of Singapore design. 

The PDA, which began in 2006, is organised by the DesignSingapore Council (DSG) and Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and conferred by the President of Singapore. 

In its first 10 years, it was conferred annually. But since the 2018 edition, it has been conferred biennially, other than a three-year break between the 2020 and 2023 editions.

DSG and URA say the biennial cycle allows for deeper consideration of a design’s impact in one or more of the four criteria: enabling economic transformation; raising quality of life; advancing Singapore brand, culture and connecting communities; and making ground-breaking achievements in design.

However, the next edition of the PDA will take place in 2028. This is because 2027 ushers in the inaugural Singapore Design Biennale, a six-week islandwide event that will also see the participation of PDA-winning designers and projects.

To commemorate PDA’s 20th-anniversary milestone in 2026, DSG and URA have launched P*DA20: Power Of Singapore Design, an exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore running until Nov 1 and showcasing all 130 Designs of the Year and 47 Designers of the Year that have been awarded since 2006.

Visitors can discover sketches, prototypes and working materials behind the projects, including some that have never been shown publicly before.

Yap Lay Bee, group director for architecture and urban design at URA, says the awards have been a way to showcase innovative approaches to designing for Singapore’s unique context, while also taking Singapore design and expertise to the world. 

“Designer of the Year winners have shaped not just Singapore’s distinctive skyline, but also how people experience and enjoy the city,” she notes.

For instance, Jewel Changi Airport, 2020’s Design of the Year winner, “turned a transit point into a distinctive destination point”, says Yap.

Meanwhile, Oasia Hotel Downtown, 2018’s Design of the Year winner, “demonstrates how greenery can be creatively woven into a dense city”. 

“These projects show that even in a compact city-state, good design can create places that are liveable, enjoyable and meaningful to everyone,” adds Yap. 

DSG’s executive director Dawn Lim observes that the winners over the years also showcase how the country’s design landscape has grown in these last two decades.

“In the earlier years, design was largely about place and space, and what connects them is empathy for how people really live, with design shaped around them. There were civic buildings, interior design and industrial products such as Bishan Library,” she says, referring to the 2007 Design of the Year winner.

“Over time, that attention turned to shaping those spaces around the lived realities of the people who use them. For instance, recovery and care in a hospital designed around its patients, like Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (Design of the Year, 2011), or growing older within a community, as seen in Kampung Admiralty (Design of the Year, 2020).”

Beyond the tangible

Recent recipients also highlight how the common understanding of design has grown beyond just tangible objects, says Lim.

For instance, the Silver Pride Lion Troupe, which was a Design of the Year winner in 2025, is Singapore’s first lion dance troupe for senior citizens.

“Design, at its core, is about using creativity to address a need, starting with understanding and empathy, then shaping something that meets it. The Silver Pride Lion Troupe is very much a designed product,” says Lim.

“By making carefully designed tweaks to the traditional equipment and choreography, the designers made it accessible, turning something the seniors had only ever watched from the side into something they could safely take part in and enjoy.”

Notably, the PDA has also recognised projects with international involvement. For instance, Samsung AddWash was recognised as a Design of the Year winner in 2016. 

AddWash is a feature that allows users to add items of clothing to their washing machine loads mid-cycle.

“While Samsung is a global company and the wider project involved teams across markets, the innovation at the heart of AddWash was led by Samsung’s product innovation team based in Singapore, serving South-east Asia and Oceania. That Singapore-led insight went on to shape a product launched worldwide,” says Lim. 

She adds that even for these international projects, Singapore must be involved in a meaningful way. “The key criterion is that the design work itself takes place here, whether partially or fully, and that it is led by Singapore talent, with the lead designer or team lead being a Singapore citizen or permanent resident.”

How the PDA catalyses Singapore design

There is no monetary prize attached to the PDA, but recipients receive a trophy. Building-based projects also receive a plaque.

Nevertheless, winners say it has proven to be an important stepping stone into the world of design.

Edwin Low, founder of design and lifestyle goods store Supermama, says that winning the PDA in 2013 – for the brand’s now-signature Singapore Icons porcelain collection – was a crucial credibility boost for a fledgling company. 

Supermama was founded in 2010, and the blue-and-white Singapore Icons collection features fun and visually interesting takes on familiar Singapore motifs – such as old-school HDB blocks – on plates. 

“(The collection) opened conversations with designers, manufacturers, museums and institutions that would probably have been much harder for us to access at that stage,” says Low. 

Imran Othman, a product designer at Streetwave when the company’s Streetwave Swaveboard won Design of the Year in 2011, agrees. “(The win) provided the credibility and platform I needed to work overseas, and to thereby immerse myself in advanced manufacturing technologies. This ultimately paved the way for (me to open) my own design consultancy.”

The Swaveboard is a two-wheeled caster board that brings the experience of surfboarding or snowboarding to land. 

Laud Architects, which won a PDA in 2020 for its work on PCF Sparkletots @ Punggol Shore, received “significant local and international exposure”, says Ho Tzu Yin, joint managing director of the local architecture firm.

Designed for up to 1,000 children, from infants to four-year-olds, the pre-school was conceived as “a simple yet thoughtful environment centred on the needs of children, educators and parents”. 

As such, more important than the exposure, “the recognition reinforced our belief that socially purposeful architecture – particularly spaces designed around the everyday needs and experiences of children – can achieve meaningful design impact”, adds Ho. 

Richard Hassell, co-founding director of Woha Architects, expresses similar sentiments with respect to his firm’s work on the Church of St Mary of the Angels in Bukit Batok. The project won Design of the Year at the inaugural PDA in 2006. 

“It gave national recognition to the ideas we were exploring through projects such as St Mary of the Angels – architecture that responded specifically to Singapore’s tropical climate, density, culture and patterns of communal life,” he says. 

And in doing so, “it helped build confidence among clients and the wider public that contemporary architecture in Singapore could be both innovative and deeply rooted in its particular place and community”, he adds. 

Likewise, Low is proud that Supermama’s Singapore Icons has continued to live on, more than a decade after its PDA win – along with helping to inform the local design landscape for lifestyle products featuring uniquely Singaporean designs. 

“At the time (in the early 2010s), Singapore souvenirs tended to be quite literal. We wanted to see whether our familiar symbols, habits, food, architecture and memories could be interpreted with more wit, abstraction and sophistication, while still feeling unmistakably Singaporean,” he notes.

“Over time, that thinking became much bigger than the collection itself. It shaped Supermama’s approach to working with Singapore designers and international manufacturers, and our belief that good objects can carry culture.”

“Today, there are many Singapore brands and designers confidently drawing from local culture in very different ways. I wouldn’t claim Singapore Icons caused that change, but I’m happy that we were part of that shift,” he adds.