Name: Social Design Lab (SoDL) Conference - Designing the Social
Start: 2026-02-05T08:30:00+08:00
End: 2026-02-05T16:30:00+08:00
Location: NUS Department of Architecture, SDE1-03-01, 4 Architecture Drive, Singapore, Singapore 117566

Social Design Lab (SoDL) Conference - Designing the Social

Interrogating what "the social" constitutes in the field of architecture, Designing the Social explores its philosophical, material, spatial and pedagogical limits. For its inaugural conference, the Social Design Lab (SoDL) at the National University of Singapore looks at how the social is activated through design, specifically how the raw material of social life might be transformed into accessible and actionable design frameworks.
The speakers will delineate and debate how "the social" is shaped through multiple, and often contradictory, design practices. These practices involve the cultivation of communities, care and repair infrastructures, organisation of action-based collectives, and the visualisation of such practices through documentation and display. We ask how architecture, design and social practices can collectively manifest new forms of sociality. We seek diverse modes of belonging, and identify creative modalities of care in today's complex urban and ecological milieu.
Venue: SDE3 Exhibition Space, Level 1