School of Spatial &
Product Design
Edwin Fong
After graduating with a Diploma in Mass Communication from Nanyang Polytechnic and BA(Hons) Product Design from LASALLE, Edwin now seeks opportunities to make his mark in the design world. Having skills in conceptualising, prototyping, model-making and content creating can help to convey ideas to clients and bring them to the physical world. He enjoys being inspired by materials – experimenting to find their limits and possibilities, which allow for truly unique designs. When not working on designs, Edwin spends his free time playing the electric bass and building scale model kits.
Work
The Better Bench Project
Around the world, one may frequently see public benches with railings in the middle. These railings are designed to prevent loitering and sleeping in public spaces. However, these designs only target marginalised groups, such as the homeless, who have little choice in occupying public spaces for rest and shelter.
The Better Bench Project is a design movement that opposes hostile architecture benches, creating design hacks to give the railings a new positive purpose and raise awareness of the issues caused by the urban design method.
The Table is a flip-up table that can be attached to any tube railing on a bench. When not in use, the table can be brought down and flushed against the bench where it does not vandalise the existing infrastructure but simply improves upon it. Its purpose serves not to solve the problem of hostile architecture but to encourage discussion into the issues and ethics of the urban design strategy. Created from epoxy resin, the product can be easily recreated through casting in a silicon rubber mould. The design is also open to the public and placed on a website that can be 3D printed and recreated anywhere else in the world.
