They have designed homes, resorts and skyscrapers — the sort of projects that take years to get from the drawing board to the tangible sphere; buildings that have won applause for their aesthetics as well as their environmental and social consciousness. So, what is it like now that the much-lauded architects at home-grown firm WOHA have started to design objets d’art — such as chairs, ottomans, lamps, rugs and even plates — for the home? The affable Richard Hassell, one half of the founding team at WOHA, laughs. “It’s like working with a microscope. At every level, you find so much more to think about.” Indeed, another architect who also turned his hand to furniture design once said: “A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous.” That was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the most influential architects of the 20th century and creator of the Barcelona chair.
The chairs are part of WOHAbeing’s Bintan collection. Named after the Riau Archipelago island just a short ferry ride away from Singapore, the Bintan suite offers a sense of the outdoors, drawing upon the beaches and verdant rainforests of Bintan, as well as a vibe of the metropolis that is the Lion City. The Turtle Easy Chair with ottoman is the architects’ permutation of sea turtles; the Crab Easy Chair takes its cue from hermit crabs found on Bintan’s beaches. The print on the fabric draws upon imagery found in Indonesian ethnographic art. The other collection from WOHAbeing that centres on furniture is Ulu. The muse for this is Alila Villas Uluwatu, which Hassell and Wong designed for the Alila hospitality group in their signature style of luxury and sustainability. The architects tried to capture the bright light and deep shadows of Uluwatu in Bali’s southern tip, which stands out for its dramatic clifffringed coastline, and were also asked to come up with a range of furniture for the hotel. The Ulu collection builds on this, celebrating the rugged environment and Bali’s rich cultural heritage. The third collection from WOHAbeing is titled Corak, which means “pattern” in Malay. It comprises a series of rugs produced in collaboration with The Rugmaker, a Singapore maker of bespoke carpets and rugs. The collection showcases Hassell’s enthusiasm for combining traditional motifs and textiles with geometries such as fractals. Late last year, Hassell showcased his artistry via an exhibition at Gillman Barracks featuring a series of prints. They explored complex geometries and tiling, a fascination of his that can be traced back to his childhood, during which he found wonder in recreational mathematics with his brother, now a mathematics professor at the National University of Australia. The rugs in the Corak collection highlight the region’s rich legacy of textiles and tribal patterns, in which abstraction, repetition and geometry play strong roles. “Asian cultural traditions are so rich and Singapore, being such an intersection of cultures, has been a limitless source of inspiration,” notes Hassell. The rugs come in limited editions of 15 and are signed and numbered. The fourth collection is called Sampan and comprises bathware. Here, bath tubs and vanity sinks are fashioned after the tapered shapes of sampans, the small wooden boats that were used to load and unload goods into warehouses along the Singapore River in the days when it was a thriving trading port. Sampan is Cantonese for “three boards” and the boats were made using a flat plank as the base, with two planks at an angle making up the sides. The bathware line was produced with apaiser, a maker of high-end bathroom fittings that was founded in Melbourne in 2000 by Belinda Try. It is known for its non-porous marble, which uses Australian minerals. Hassell and Wong had worked with apaiser for the Parkroyal project, making the company, now headquartered in Singapore, a natural choice for WOHAbeing’s bathware line.
WOHAbeing conceptualises and designs all its homeware products, leaving the manufacture, distribution and shipping to its partners. “We’re not going to sell stuff directly,” says Hassell. “We don’t want to get into the retail space directly. We’re really interested in people who can make stuff beautifully or well.” Hassell and Wong set the creative direction for WOHAbeing, which has six people working on the new brand. The architectural practice as a whole has swelled to about 90 staff, making it one of the larger firms in the trade. “That’s the beauty of the brand. When we come across people we like working with, people with skills and crafts we like, we can wrap it into our work,” says Hassell. As he sees it, 90% of people are just doing a job. Only a tenth are really passionate and excited about what they do. “We have built a network of people who love making stuff. We can choose who we work with and we can choose to work with the best.” That said, this is a world awash with mass-market brands such as IKEA, whose low prices have fostered a throwaway attitude towards furnishings. It is also a marketplace buffeted by the internet, where you can even buy big-ticket items such as sofas online now. Hassell acknowledges the appeal of affordable brands such as IKEA, but reckons there is a space for furniture and homeware that are well crafted and thoughtfully designed. “WOHAbeing can fit into different environments,” he says, adding that it has classical bones with respect to proportion, shape, comfort and scale. He also feels there is more of a blurred line today, with outdoor versus indoor furniture and modern versus vintage furnishings. As architects, Hassell and Wong have struck a chord producing architecture that has been guided by local context, culture and climatic conditions. With their latest designs for home interiors, they must be hoping to strike an emotional chord with people who prize craftsmanship and consciously made items for the home.
Left to right: The Oli 44 chandelier was created in partnership with WonderGlass of the UK • Rimba (bottom) and Lautan (top) rugs from the Corak collection • The Bintan collection (from left): Turtle Easy Chair with ottoman in ochre; Crab Side Table with Angler Lamp; Turtle Side Table and Crab Easy Chair in espresso Sunita Sue Leng, formerly an associate editor at The Edge Singapore, loves looking at beautiful buildings This article appeared in Issue 795 (Sep 4) of The Edge Singapore.
