(Design) the Distance

Year
2021-2022

Covid-19 design interventions had become ubiquitous worldwide as a first line of defence against the pandemic in 2020. In Singapore, these design interventions have proliferated in its unique manners to meet the requirements of Safe Management Measures (SMM), also known as public guidelines for social distancing.

While local authorities provide advisories on the measures, directives on how to implement these measures are not predetermined. Thus, the onus was on organisations and businesses in the public sphere to create infrastructures that support the stipulated social distancing measures.

Created for temporal use and reactive in nature, rapid and pragmatic solutions appeared as a visual pattern at malls, parks, and other public spaces to encourage social distances. Some common interventions appeared in the form of printed signages to explain measures and high-visibility construction barriers to cordon tables and seats off. Stickers which indicated one’s vaccination-approved entry had also become a common sight amidst the cityscape.

This study documents design interventions for social distancing in Singapore, examining its impacts on Singapore's cityscape and members of the public after two years of its implementation, and to explore the value of design in emergency interventions. Visual anthropology was employed as a means to study and document social distancing design interventions and its impact on communities over the duration of eight months. Ethnographic unstructured interviews were also conducted with members of the public who implement SMM design interventions and users of these public spaces.

01. Epidemic Ephemera

This photography series proposes an alternate view on the global epidemic, placing designed objects and the people who implement them at the forefront. Epidemic Ephemera features the unique manners in which Covid-19 design interventions have proliferated throughout Singapore, with the use of high-visibility tape, orange mesh barriers and other ephemeral materials. Through visual anthropology, this publication serves as a typology documenting safe-distancing designs implemented across our cityscape from September 2021 to April 2022.

02. Design (the) Distance: A Handbook

This handbook provides an extensive reflection on Singapore’s design interventions in response to the Safe Management Measures (SMM) stipulated by local authorities through the course of the pandemic.

Through qualitative research methods such as interviews with citizen-designers and participatory workshops with practising design students, this handbook explores and advocates for co-creating impactful designs for societies between citizen-designers and designers by profession.

03 Citizen-Designed Interventions

The series of two feature videos brings to light the design processes of Singapore’s Covid-19 safe distancing design interventions and celebrates the creativity of the citizen-designers in our midst.

Follow along two citizen-designers, Murgen S/O Vim and Norizan Bin Jantan, at their respective workplaces where they have been tasked to create design interventions which adhere to prevailing Safe Management Measures.

Participatory design workshops conducted with student designers to create design interventions with everyday materials.

View more images from the project here.