Randy J. Hunt is the Head of design for Grab, the Singapore-based technology company offering ride-hailing transport services, food delivery and payment solutions. He leads a team of designers, writers, engineers and researchers who create and manage Grab’s app. He was living and working in New York before moving to Singapore in 2019. He is also a Jury Member of the 2020 President*s Design Award Jury Panel.

How did the pandemic reshape the way you work?

Randy: Grab is a regional company with global operations so remote collaboration and working across time zones is quite normal for us. What changed during the pandemic was our total dependence on working remotely.

Unable to meet physically, the design team realised some of our research and prototyping work can be done faster and at a lower cost remotely.

When you work remotely with collaboration tools, more people can participate, and you can easily share the materials created as opposed to having to take a photo of what you physically draw on a whiteboard. Many of the tools support some form of documentation which feels more accurate and complete. It’s also easier to invite someone along later.

The other thing is intentionality and mindset around how we meet. In the past, the default was to book a meeting room because everyone else was around and you assumed that was the best way of doing it. Now, we have a better understanding of which meeting is best done in-person and which is better done in a distributed way, or it doesn’t matter so much.

Grab staff at a learning and development workshop at their Cecil Court office prior to COVID-19. Image credit: Grab Holdings Inc

How do you think workplaces will evolve?

Randy: The pandemic made us experience what it was like to be fully remote and how much people wanted to — or not to — work from home. When they craved coming to the office, why was it? These insights informed the design of our upcoming headquarters, where we are taking on a much more task-oriented space planning approach for its interior design.

One is for more in-between spaces that allows for organic collaboration. It’s not just choosing between conference rooms or a couch where people can gather with their laptops. It’s semi-private spaces with a little more infrastructure for greater flexible use of space.

The other is simply a space to gather for human connection. Many of us don’t need to be in the office to get our core work done, but we want to just bump into our colleagues in the hallway.

So, the office is more like a place you desire to go to, even if that is now only a couple of days a week. It still creates the serendipitous and organic connections that are not driven by meetings or deadlines and allows people to feel they are a part of this together.

The challenge for now and the future is how can we continue to design office spaces in a way that can further complement people’s changing lifestyles.

With an increasing emphasis for on-the-go services in the city, what are some challenges policy makers and designers should pay closer attention to?

Randy: From the urban logistics perspective, a key challenge is how deliveries and movements getting into and out of developments and shopping malls can be made quickly and with great confidence.

What does getting into and out of developments look like? Are there special routes and entrances for those who are providing on-the-go services? Are there different characteristics in wayfinding or ways the developments may express their data on movements that may be helpful for service industry professionals like ourselves?

In a shopping mall context, it is designed for people to stay in the space. But when some of those things are on-demand, that is the inverse of the efficiency of space because people may want to get in and out as quickly as possible to get their stuff.

So, there are a lot of considerations for adapting existing environments and imagining new environments that can serve emerging needs. It is also not always about going into things but things coming to you.

What do you love about Singapore and what do you miss about New York?

Randy: They are interrelated in a way. What I love here is how good the public services are. Things are highly predictable and reliable which lowers the collective anxiety and adds to the quality of life.

What I miss about a place like New York is the serendipity and unpredictability. The tension and friction that makes for interesting places. Not everything has a place in a way, and the jumbled-up spaces are where interesting stuff happens.

Sarah Ichioka is an Urbanist, Curator and Writer. She currently leads Desire Lines, a strategic consultancy for environmental, cultural, and social-impact organisations and initiatives. In previous roles, she has explored the intersections of cities, society and ecology within institutions of culture, policy and research. Her coming new book, “Flourish”, co-authored with Michael Pawlyn, proposes regenerative design principles to restore balance to our world for future generations. www.flourish-book.com

Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park, taken prior to COVID-19

How should we think about our relationship with nature?

Sarah: Childhood exposure to nature is a key factor in conservation attitudes and behaviours in later life.

While I was growing up, many weeks spent at the beach, on mountains and in forests shaped my appreciation of how dependent we humans are upon the rest of nature, a fact that urban life can often obscure.

I see tremendous opportunities for hands-on outdoor education within our cities, from toddlers to adolescents.

I hope to see an explosion of “Forest Schools” and Outward Bound-style programmes that cultivate skills of stewardship, curiosity and interdependence with the natural world.

The success of such programmes will need to rely upon suitably large and ecologically complex spaces to host them.

In a 2019 ArchDaily article, you suggested that cities should design modes of urban “vision” that enhance inter-species communication, allowing us to better see, appreciate and accommodate non-human lives unfolding around us. For example, could the office elevator remind us to pop up to the roof on our coffee break to watch the butterflies emerging from their chrysalises?

Sarah: At the root of so many of our problems, from social inequality to human-induced ecological breakdown, is what Charles Eisenstein¹ calls ‘the story of separation’.

In this mental model, each individual person is separate from other humans, and humans are in turn separate from the rest of nature.

My plea for new forms of interspecies seeing grew from my observation that so many of us are busy building a brave new world run by machines, in virtual spaces, on other planets even, without reconciling ourselves with the fundamental truth of our interdependence with the earthly systems that sustain us.

The pandemic has helped us to recognise how interconnected we all are.

The pandemic has also contributed to a growing interest in urban farming and gardening. How can neighbourhoods in Singapore be better designed to accommodate them?

Sarah: In order to support and scale these activities, my mind turns to software rather than hardware. For example, let’s design neighbourhood-level soil rebuilding programmes that include composting of food “waste”, use of clippings and leaves for in situ mulching, and no-till planting².

Let’s design a geo-location app that enables gardeners to signal when they’re happy for passers-by to sample their crops, or when they’d rather keep them for their own families. Let’s design a community time banking system that enables youths to swap their labour for vegetable growing lessons from knowledgeable elders in their block. And so on.

Having lived in Singapore since 2014, what are some of the things you love about your neighbourhood and being here?

Sarah: Many of my neighbours live in multigenerational households, and I love observing the daily and weekly patterns of intergenerational living and socialising.

I also love the way that Singapore’s water infrastructure is woven into its public spaces. My neighbourhood’s network of stormwater canals are key arteries for human, and more-than-human activity. To spot an egret stalking his fish for breakfast on my walk to the train station never fails to delight.

¹ Charles Eisenstein is an American public speaker and author. His work covers a wide range of topics, including the history of human civilisation, economics, spirituality, and the ecology movement. According to Charles, global culture is immersed in a "story of separation", and one of the main goals of his work is to present an alternative "story of interbeing".

² Mulching refers to applying a layer of material to the surface of soil to conserve the soil moisture, improve its fertility and health and to reduce weed growth. No-till planting or no-till farming is the practice of planting crops without tilling the soil.

William Ng is the Founder of Studio Wills + Architects, formed in 2013 and is focused on residential design. In 2018, he re-configured his 64-square metre three-room public housing flat in Serangoon (called Project #13), together with his colleague, Kho Keguang, to create clearer home and office spaces.

Why did you reconfigure your flat to have more distinct home and office spaces?

William and Keguang: The unit is located along a common corridor, so in a way, it lacks privacy. We wanted to do something about it because my great grandmother (William’s) used to stay in a unit like this. When I visited her, her doors were completely open.

We designed a buffer zone to create a physical distance between the corridor and the unit. By doing that, you don’t really have to shut your doors and draw your curtains which is happening now. It brings back the neighbourliness in a way. Our neighbours feel comfortable looking into our unit and so do we.

With the zone, we naturally created two entrances and the idea of two units came about. We didn’t really start with programming the spaces but instead thought of their relationship as an open space and a cellular space. We suspect it is one of the reasons why the flat is so adaptable.

Project #13 - William's flat in Serangoon. Image credit: Studio Wills + Architects

How did the design of your flat become even more useful during the pandemic?

William and Keguang: One thing we didn’t imagine to be so useful was the buffer zone. You can choose for deliveries to be contactless, so, they can leave the food or parcel in the foyer and they can still see us. Our neighbours have also left food there for us too.

The flat also offers distinct separated living and working spaces. Many may face challenges working from home because many of their spaces tend to be connected. You may have screaming kids while the parents go into a Zoom meeting. We have also observed many of our friends working from home on the dining table or in their bedroom where they can see their bed.

Being able to have a separation of spaces may be challenging to achieve for everyone. Houses or flats these days are designed with a single doorway, so you must trot through all the other spaces before you get to your office set-up at home.

When we reconfigured this flat, we created two separate spaces or units. These are built with the same materials but differ in the colour and proportion. Having this spatial difference is important because when you are in your living space, you don’t want to keep thinking about work.

What is one insight your flat offers in reflecting about the design of future living spaces?

William: If there is no need for the office set-up at home, I can continue to use all the spaces as my living area. When I get older, my sister can also come to live with me, and our paths need not cross. It’s not that we don’t get along.

If someone takes over, they can start a small business from home and turn one half of the flat into an office space again. In this sense, the flat becomes more flexible and you can keep adapting the uses.

Project #13 - William's flat in Serangoon. Image credit: Studio Wills + Architects

As the boundaries between work and home continue to blur, how might the design of such spaces in Singapore evolve?

William and Keguang: Adaptability has always been something very close to our hearts. For this slab block, you can come in from different directions unlike a lot of new flats where you come through a lift and go to the individual units. This changes the relationship of the circulation area to the unit and provides a lot of leeway to rethink typologies.

We’ve also always liked the idea of differentiation, duality and contrast. When we design houses or flats, we never just think about a flat as just a flat or a house as just a house. We think about how we can create relationships between spaces.

At some point, the family composition will change. A building must be designed to accommodate this reality. The challenge is how can we adapt our buildings further to last for a longer time.

Associate Professor Ho Kong Chong is an urban sociologist with the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore and the incoming Head of the Urban Studies Programme at Yale-NUS. He has researched and written about East and Southeast Asian cities including Singapore, delving into topics such as the neighbourhood, social cohesion, community life, heritage and the political economy of cities.

With people spending more time in their immediate neighbourhoods, how can we cater for a greater variety of mixed uses?

Kong Chong: When it comes to the built environment, once you build specific infrastructure, they are very hard to take down if they don’t work.

But you want some flexibility because in the mid-to long-term, the profile of a neighbourhood changes. It could become younger, older or have more families or more singles. You want to be able to arrive at a configuration that serves the population living there.

We should think of neighbourhoods that can accommodate activities and services which are more portable and mobile. For instance, the National Library Board has a mobile library at community centres. This pop-up model can be expanded to a library on wheels which could visit more neighbourhoods. Facilities move to residents rather than residents move to facilities

Imagine the town council or residents’ committee working with the polyclinic, library or NTUC to offer mobile amenities that visit different precincts one day a week. It makes things even more convenient for residents and neighbourhood spaces can become more multifunctional. Sometimes it can be food and sometimes it’s books, groceries, healthcare or other things. “Things on wheels” can become a regular weekly fixture and residents can look forward to these events and have a chance to meet.

The other thing is to look out for neighbourhood spaces to cater for more workspaces. We never really anticipated this but during this pandemic, we started to plan for spaces for students to do their homework away from home. So, the neighbourhood can become a third space by having work pods that mediate between home and school as well as work.

What else should we focus on in shaping our neighbourhoods for the future?

Kong Chong: As the economy changes in the longer term, we need to rethink the kinds of economic spaces to plan for in new towns. We already have light industries, but what else? Also, how do we think about logistics and its impact on congestion in the neighbourhood? Can we think of smaller-scale craft-based workshops? We have work from home now. Can we have work from neighbourhoods? Siting economic activities in neighbourhoods may also have other implications if such activities have the tendency to produce too much noise and different kinds of pollutants.

If the pandemic cycles become shorter and occur frequently, we must rethink the movement of residents in a neighbourhood too. Some students at the National University of Singapore’s School of Architecture have as their assignments a redesign of the neighbourhood block so when certain facilities and access routes are shut down during a pandemic and there will still be opportunities allow a small group of families to meet and interact.

These are some ways in which we can rethink the movement of residents such that when some places can be closed off, you don’t lose the sociability of the neighbourhood.

Engineers can also work on improving air circulation in dense neighbourhood environments. As a tropical city with many sheltered areas, how do we control airflow to reduce the possibilities of infection?

Neighbourhoods have become extensions of our homes. A cosy corridor space captured by photographer Juan Chan

The pandemic has reinforced the importance of social resilience. How can our neighbourhoods help build stronger communities?

Kong Chong: Building stronger communities will involve regular participation from different residential segments of the neighbourhood. The Sungmisan Village¹ in Seoul  challenges us to rethink how the neighbourhood can help to build more resilient communities.

In this village, they have included a thrift shop where you can donate items and receive vouchers that can be used in other village businesses, such as a restaurant and a co-op supermarket.

They have created an alternative school where students of different ages study together and learning includes the history of the community.

Some families have also worked with architects to build their own multi-family apartments where they decide together the types of social spaces which they share.

All these features in Sungmisan work together to create strong participation and commitment of the residents to their neighbourhood.

Several years ago, I was doing some work that involved neighbourhood efforts in Tampines Central. One of the efforts was led by the Resident Committee (RC) group that saw to the storage and deployment of mobile furniture that could be used at void deck spaces. When there was an activity, the furniture was used and when there was no activity, the furniture was stored at the void deck.

On one of the days, I observed that a cooking class was conducted. It attracted a rare and elusive population, which are mothers with young children. They don’t usually approach the RC for things but if you have cooking classes and the kids are interested, then moms are interested too. Another RC decided on a morning café where residents can come together for a quick drink and snacks before school or work. Some come after their morning exercise.

These are all innovative and simple ideas that are not too costly to do and is something we should continue to explore and experiment to increase participation.

How might the role of the neighbourhood evolve in the future?

Kong Chong: Fundamentals such as harmony, cohesiveness, resilience and community participation will become even more important as our city becomes more diverse.

One of the functions of the neighbourhood is to integrate diverse communities. This function remains relevant and is even more critical as the neighbourhood continues to be a place where we spend significant periods of time in.

It’s a place that we relax and recharge. It’s a place where we grow up in and have strong childhood memories. The neighbourhood is really an intimate and familiar extension of our home.

Building upon this idea of social mixing, we need to continue to ensure that the future designs of our neighbourhoods include a higher element of inclusiveness. The social elements of the future are determined in our schools and our neighbourhoods.

¹ The Sungmisan Village is a small neighbourhood in the Mapo-gu district, in the north western part of Seoul. It was initiated by neighbours in the vicinity in 1994 to address an urgent urban challenge then and have over the years evolved into an alternative model of community living with cooperative businesses and activities developed that are shaped by the citizens themselves based on common shared values. Read more about this village in Professor Ho’s book, "Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia" (University of Amsterdam Press, 2019).

Cai Yinzhou is the Founder of the social enterprise, Citizen Adventures, that raises awareness on social issues and provides support for more minority communities. He also co-founded the COVID-19 Migrant Support Coalition in April 2020, mobilising volunteers across different groups to provide support for migrant workers.www.citizenadventures.com

What is Citizen Adventures all about?

Yinzhou: I started it in 2013 as a social experiment to see how we can design experiences for Singaporeans to better understand our neighbourhoods as social ecosystems and our interconnectedness as individuals relative to these systems, and the issues within.

One example is the Backalley Barbers that we started. We encountered a migrant work friend who did not cut his hair for four months to pay off his father’s medical bills. So, I started learning to cut hair by watching YouTube videos in order to be able to give him a free haircut.

Yinzhou providing a haircut for a migrant worker. Image credit: Citizen Adventures

From one to three barbers and eventually to a team of 60 volunteer barbers, Backalley Barbers has given more than 5,000 haircuts (as of 2021). Beyond migrant workers, Backalley Barbers also cuts residents’ hair free-of-charge in nursing homes and low-income communities on a weekly basis.

What other initiatives have you pursued?

Yinzhou: Since 2014, we have been conducting walking tours in Geylang. As a life-long resident of Geylang, I am interested to see how we can further appreciate our diverse and vibrant neighbourhoods through the eyes of many local communities.

Our walking tours are different from others as they also share more about the relationships between communities and the social dynamics within neighbourhoods.

For instance, we involve migrant workers who are my friends in our tours. They would share openly who they are and their journey to Singapore and it would leave lasting impressions on visitors.

How did the pandemic impact on your activities?

Yinzhou: When COVID-19 hit, our tours had to be stopped. We realised the migrant worker community had many needs and we were able to do something.

We tapped on our network of volunteers to raise funds, procure supplies and deliver them to the foreign workers’ dormitories. We recognised that collaboration with the dormitories was necessary because they are the primary caregivers.

Yinzhou leading a walking tour prior to COVID-19. Image credit: Citizen Adventures

How has Citizen Adventures since resumed its activities?

Yinzhou: Previously, we had two walking tours in Geylang and Dakota. In August 2020, we developed two others. One is kayaking at Marina Reservoir to learn about environmental sustainability. The other is a yacht tour covering development and food security off the coast of Pulau Ubin where we took visitors to visit the coastal area to understand kelongs and how they operate.

We started these because when COVID-19 hit, we realised how vulnerable our food supplies were. Living in an urban city, we may not understand what’s out there and we may not ask enough questions such as how we get our seafood.

Travel restrictions have made citizens seek adventures in their own backyards. How might tourism in Singapore evolve?

Yinzhou: What I find meaningful about travel is learning about the way of life of others and the wisdom of the land. On our tours, we call these “non-Googleable”—things you cannot Google.

We see local tourism as a way of re-reading and deepening our ideas of history in Singapore. There are many facets of our success story that can be told differently from the perspective of different types of communities, for example, by a samsui woman or a construction worker.

The curation of Singapore’s history is something we have done very well to appeal to the mass market, but today, we are hearing new sides of our history and it’s a great time to explore these rich narratives.

Even in schools, we can encourage self-discovery such as getting students to interview their grandparents. These are important ways of appreciating the context of our history towards one's identity.