LIFE

WORDS

LUO JING MEI

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF

OLIVIA LEE

TELLING TALES

OLIVIA LEE’S NARRATIVE-LED WORKS STAND OUT IN THE CROWDED DESIGN SCENE FOR THEIR CHARM AND DEPTH OF MEANING.

In November 2019, Olivia Lee transformed the top two storeys of Hermès’ Singapore flagship store into an otherworldly landscape.

She blanketed the penultimate floor in undulating terracotta clay, forming towers, valleys and ridges.

She timed a miniature metallic-copper train to loop in and out of tunnels.

She poised little vermillion diggers in midmotion of unearthing buttons and buckles. Welcome to Planet H.

The enchanting tableaus hint at extraterrestrial life gathering material scraps, which Hermès’ offshoot design atelier petit h turns into the exquisite objects – furniture, bags, stationery – colouring the setting.

Lee was inspired by the astronauts’ similar resourcefulness in the film Apollo 13 (they assembled a carbon dioxide-recycling machine with spacecraft parts).

From Planet H, visitors traverse up a staircase to the futuristic Habitat H, interacting with faux machinery amid plants that laud the host city’s own penchant for nature and innovation.

The experience spills to the street through artful window displays, a dynamic façade graphic and an interactive feature that lights up stars and planets.

LIKE PLANNING A PARTY

This installation could well represent the inside of Lee’s mind.

Her Alice in Wonderland-type encounters use storytelling and games to get her points across, and the joyful responses they generate echo the fun she has making them.

Lotus leaves frozen in the Float resin table for Industry+ gives to mesmerising light play.

The gnarled and the gleaming juxtapose in a wabi sabi moment for her ’30 LifeStories – Remembering Parks’ Struck bench.

For Bynd Artisan, leather-bound tomes masquerade as coin banks and clutches, and the pastel, brassy objects in The Athena Collection are technologically-useful without being high-tech.

In Lee’s hands, the everyday – materials, messages and memories – become more beautiful.

In photographs, Lee’s arresting features – small eyes embellished with kohl flicks, prominent rosebud lips, blunt fringe – accompany structured outfits to project confidence and focus.

In person, she is also girly and approachable, and speaks with an endearing lyrical timbre.

This disposition reflects her works, which are as whimsical as they are relevant, and as aestheticallyinclined as they are technically-refined.

She elaborates on her approach of slow reveal.

“There’s a bit of mischief in what I do,” she chuckles.

“I think in design, you need to have a sense of fun, play and humour. Thinking about a [project’s] experience is like planning a party – how do I build in thoughtful touch points with a surprise at the end?”

For Lee, play is serious business, “I find that when you talk about qualities like happiness, beauty or wonder in design, people immediately write that off as superficial.

“But I firmly disagree. I think we need a greater sense of wonder in our buy-and-throw away culture. It allows us to have greater appreciation for our objects,” she ruminates.

Furthermore, when people come to the message on their own, in a fun way, they’re most likely to remember it.

The word “wonder” pops into her projects, as if a reminder of this manifesto.

There is the Museum of Wonder – a Hermès shop window display which has jocular, absurdist mise en scène snapshots Lee’s version of industrialisation – and The Wonder Facility, her studio-cum-co-workoffice welcoming alike minds.

An admirable lexicon running the gamut of Greek mythology, history and science backs her visions.

She’s not just a romantic; she’s also a geek. Lee smiles in admission.

MUCH TIME FOR PLAY

During school holidays, she was equally contented accomplishing tasks for the Science Centre’s Young Scientist Badge program and ploughing through books on all topics.

She joined the science club, arts club, computer club, drama club, choir and helped with the school magazine.

Such diverse interests resulted in fluctuating vocational goals, unlike classmates with ambitions clearly in hard-nosed or liberal arts professions.

In industrial design, she found her salvation.

“It felt right for me because I feel disciplines don’t belong in silos,” says Lee, whose childhood businesswoman dreams – she experimented with imaginary company logos – represented an interest in not just how things are made, but also sold.

While Lee’s commercial artist parents did not overtly promote design, they did provide a nurturing framework.

Lee had access to their design books and magazines, and art supplies like cow gum, set squares and spray mounts were not out of bounds.

“As a child, seeing projects just emerge around

the house set up this can-do spirit,” she shares.

Ample playground time after school with neighbours also benefitted.

“The make-belief, unstructured play is a very design mind set; you need to take what is available to you and then create your own rules, find the game within that,” she espouses.

At the National University of Singapore’s Division of Industrial Design (NUS DID), she happily supplemented design classes with cross-faculty modules in astrophysics and film.

But in her third year, she transferred to London’s Central Saint Martins (CSM) on a Design Singapore Council (Dsg) scholarship, upon advice of mentors who told her that to be a good designer, she had to see the world.

CSM’s variegated design disciplines supplied depth of design knowledge but the city proved to be the hidden school.

She patronised its countless museums and exhibitions, and travelled nearby to explore the Milan Furniture Fair and Paris’ Nuit Blanche.

“It’s like a smorgasbord of experiences and influences, which was formidable in shaping my early twenties, forming my creative identity,” she says.

There, she thrived, graduating with First Class Honours.

Fame came early with her thesis project – a trio of Limited Edition Dolls (Zaha Hadid, Karim Rashid, Jaime Hayon) as a tongue-in-cheek observation of the cult of design.

It was widely featured and earned her a guest illustrator opportunity for international design magazine Icon.

CHILD AT HEART

For Lee, stepping out of her comfort zone aids creative growth.

After working for London-based designer Sebastian Bergne, she joined the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), employing design thinking to help grow the consumer-facing business sectors.

In 2013, she took a leap of faith, establishing her eponymous studio.

It was the right move, allowing her to explore multifarious avenues including furniture design, scenography and brand communications that fed her restless nature and consolidated her brand.

What delights her most is how she is able to continue doing what she enjoyed as a child, albeit on a different scale.

“I realised that scenography and comic bookdesign are similar; the windows are like sequences of comic panels.

“A large part of it is actually storytelling and how to compose a scene to tell a story very quickly,” she explains.

Her fascination with machinery and processes found their way into projects for Hermès and The Marvellous Marble Factory for SingaPlural 2015 that had her serving up confectionery imitations made from natural stone on a conveyor belt.

Lee highlights Rube Goldberg’s illustrations of fantastical contraptions she discovered behind a cereal box as a child.

“I think, in a way, I still want to be that inventor,” she muses.

“I really love that kind of absurdity and humour. I would take apart and reassemble LEGO and Meccano sets, aspiring to make these machines.”

As a designer, she’s able to do just that, inventing for clients like Bank of Singapore, Samsung and The Balvenie.

Moving on, perhaps, a hotel, the interior of a space ship or an entirely new vision to address pertinent issues such as sustainability?

How these would look like through Lee’s wild and witty lens is something we can’t wait to explore.