PAMSC Design Forum 2026 — A Personal Observation
PAMSC has been organising their Design Festival (PDF) for a number of years now; it is a popular event with the local members. The events start on a Friday and end on Sunday; it includes a practice seminar, student competition, a trade expo, a networking dinner, the Design Forum and site visits to significant projects in town. The theme for this year’s forum was ‘Edges and Transitions – designing between worlds.’
Amongst the speakers for this year’s design forum was renowned architect Peter Stutchbury from Australia, I have always admired his work and he was the main reason I signed up for the event. I have watched videos of his talks before and although his talk last Saturday started in a familiar fashion, he expanded on it to include recent works and some community projects. He talked about learning from nature, from our mentors and elders, and from making – it is clear that each project is an intimate journey for him. His lecture covered his civic buildings as well as his houses; starting with his church building in Papua New Guinea, and ending with his work on small pre-fab housing with DimensionX, and my personal favourite; the Night Sky House. His deep involvement in his work means that he is able to relate personal stories about the place, the clients, including ones he built for in the favelas in Brazil.
There were 4 other speakers; Caleb Ong from FORMZERO (Malaysia), Nicholas Yeo from POPULOUS (Singapore), Eric Chen from ARCHIBLUR LAB (Taiwan) and Marcia Jesus from 100 ARCHITECTS (Shanghai).
Caleb Ong and Eric Chen similarly spoke from personal involvements in their featured projects. Caleb tailored his presentation to the Forum theme in a series of 6 stories/projects, using edges, boundaries and transitions to frame his talk. He speaks about blurring the boundaries between the inside and outside which is successful within the confines of the houses. The siting of his houses within the urban fabric is less seamless; often towering over their neighbours, the Borderless House delineates itself from the neighbourhood with imposing concrete walls. The Canopy House is perhaps the most successful in this case; it hugs the terrain with a steadily pitching roof that shelters the terraced living spaces below.
Eric spoke about collaboration with other designers and architects; brief encounters which often result in a built project and lessons learned for himself and his students who are sometimes the construction work-force. He spoke from a vast portfolio; mostly temporary installations, in the city, in the forest, near the sea – a sort of architectural acupuncture that is designed to stimulate or activate a response. Although these projects are often temporary (some allowed to decay and return back to nature as part of the exhibition), he tells us that their impact is long term and continual. I would have preferred a smaller selection of projects, and for these to be presented in more depth because I am quite certain there are back stories and lessons for us in the audience as well.
For me, the forum is clearly divided into two parts – one is which the architect speaks from a personal viewpoint having executed the projects themselves with their team, while the other half sees the architect presenting what their company has done – a portfolio presentation of sorts. I was amazed by 100 ARCHITECTS’s presentation; a catalogue of playscapes of dizzying colours and contortions and impressed by the scale of POPULOUS’s projects in the US, in Japan, in China. But I am not able to recall a project of particular interest to me. Design forums are meant to cater for a wide field of attendees, but I feel that the speakers can do more research on their audience and make an effort to tailor the lectures.
There is a final chapter; the moderation/Q&A session which was poorly handled. The questions were read from the SLIDO app which was posted on screen without prior editing or curating. A summing up of the day’s presentations by the moderator would have be useful to channel first questions to the speakers. Instead, the questions from the audience were read verbatim from the screen. Organising an event like this takes a lot of effort; I know first-hand what it takes, and I know first-hand what it took for the organising Chairman and his committee to make this a success. As PAMSC successfully concludes another PDF, it would be good to see how we can all help to improve the next one, and make it less taxing on the organiser so that he would consider continuing his good work in this role.
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