THE SPIRIT OF EXPLORATION

A master of storytelling through material experimentation, designer, curator and educator Hans Tan is not afraid to look at everyday objects in new ways.

A three-time winner of the President's Design Award, widely known for his works that blur the boundary between design and art, Hans Tan developed his initial interest in design during his perusal of course offerings at the National University of Singapore (NUS). With his self-admitted strength in business, Hans was drawn to pursing industrial design as it offered a balance of design, engineering and business, which spurred him to give this unique creative career path a chance.

The rest, as they say, was history. Hans ended design at NUS for four years, followed by a two-year master's degree at the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven in The Netherlands, where his design philosophy was shaped by the likes of Joost Grootens, an architect by training but a book designer by trade, and Barbara Visser, a contemporary conceptual artist, photographer, video artist, and performance artist.

When Hans came back to Singapore, he knew that he wanted to start his own firm immediately. "There was no design company at the time in Singapore that worked adventurously with materials and I knew that to do that I had to venture off on my own," he explains. "I wanted to be a pioneer and a changemaker, to work on projects that were more conceptual and exploratory."

Craft with Story and Meaning