If you’ve explored our neighbourhood recently, you would have spotted an intriguing installation in The Great Hall — one that has hosted pop-up markets, talks and workshops for our Neighbourhood Socials since April 2023. Known as The Gatherspace, this distinctive spatial experience was made in collaboration with acclaimed design agency, ASOLIDPLAN, led by Wong Ker How, Quck Zhong Yi and Lim Jing Feng. 

With a portfolio that spans projects of all scales and arenas, from commercials and residential architecture and interior design to stage and event design, ASOLIDPLAN brings a wealth of fresh perspectives to our neighbourhood. Thanks to their design philosophy and appreciation for the architecture of Millenia Walk, The Gatherspace was designed to complement the iconic pyramids in MW’s roof, making it a truly unique structure.

Created with longevity in mind, The Gatherspace is a modular space that seeks to celebrate all forms of community in our Creative Neighbourhood. From workshops, talks, performances, and markets, to passers-by resting and reflecting, we hope you uncover inspiration The Gatherspace at the Neighbourhood Socials and beyond. 

Let ASOLIDPLAN be your guide to The Gatherspace, as we chat about their creative practice, design inspirations, and community at MW Creative Neighbourhood.

One of ASOLIDPLAN’s Directors, Jing Feng, and Senior Designer Amanda, who showed us around The Gatherspace and their favourite parts of MW Creative Neighbourhood.

Can you tell us more about your journey and creative philosophy as ASOLIDPLAN?

ASOLIDPLAN is built on the belief that good design begins with a well-conceived plan. We pride ourselves on being contextualist designers, deriving our concepts from the contextual intersection of the client, place, and time unique to each and every project.

We are passionate about design that provokes, questions, and pushes limits without compromising on durability, functionality, or integrity. We believe in going the furthest we can with the simplest ideas. We love creating spaces that are evocative, that can connect with the environment and beyond.

The ASOLIDPLAN team took The Gatherspace as an opportunity to dialogue with the architecture of Millenia Walk.

How does this collaboration with Millenia Walk compare to other projects you’ve worked on in the past?

This collaboration is especially interesting for us, because Millenia Walk holds a special place in the hearts of many local architects. It’s one of the key postmodern masterpieces of Singapore architecture in the 1990s, and this collaboration gives us an opportunity to dialogue with its iconic design.

Part of Millenia Walk’s iconic architectural features, the pyramidal roof in The Great Hall can be seen in The Gatherspace’s trapezium shapes and mirrored surfaces.

What are some of your favourite aspects of the architecture at Millenia Walk?

Our favourite space has to be the Shopping Galleria. We love the experience of walking through the Galleria, passing under the differently coloured pyramidal frusta — the portion of a pyramid with the top removed — as natural light washes down. Through the use of gradated gridlines and false perspectives, the pyramid surfaces create a clever illusion around their height and depth, long before the Trickeye Museum!

Outside of events and programmes, The Gatherspace offers a space to rest and reflect at the heart of our neighbourhood.

Have your experiences at Millenia Walk influenced the installation in any way?

As contextualist designers, our immediate thought was to respond to the pyramid above The Great Hall, the grandest of the 15 pyramids at Millenia Walk. We asked ourselves: how we can we bring the grand pyramid down to the street level for everyone to experience?

To achieve this, we discovered we could invert the pyramid and let it taper down to the ground. We then deconstructed this inverted pyramid into pieces of inclined trapeziums that mirror the surfaces of the pyramids on Millenia Walk’s roof.

These trapeziums form pieces of mobile furniture for both display and seating, turning The Gatherspace into a flexible space. Each furniture module can be arranged to accommodate different events, and rearranged to the default inverted pyramid formation when not in use.

This April and May, The Gatherspace was home to two pop-up markets, organised together with Whytespace. Here’s to more lively markets and events in the future!
 

What are you most looking forward to about The Gatherspace at Millenia Walk?

We are excited to see how the public will interact with the modules we designed. We hope the community at MWCN takes some time to stop at The Gatherspace to appreciate the grand pyramid in The Great Hall, and that through our work, we can draw more attention to the beautiful ceiling at Millenia Walk.

It would also be great to witness more creative uses of the furniture modules! Oftentimes, when working with spatial experiences for people and local communities, we find that people’s use of the spaces we design may not align with what we had imagined. It’s quite fascinating.

Other uses of The Gatherspace: workshops and sharing sessions, like this one on plant care with Kampong Niners, and admiring yourself in the mirrors!

What do you love most about the community at Millenia Walk?

We love how MWCN brings in and celebrates local creatives. We share the belief that there are many undiscovered local talents who deserve more visibility and recognition.

What are some topics you’d love to have a conversation about with your fellow creatives at MWCN?

Everything under the sun (filtered through the pyramids lining the Galleria!).

Explore The Gatherspace, brought to life in collaboration with ASOLIDPLAN supported by Just Build, in The Great Hall today, and join us as we celebrate our shared passions at our Neighbourhood Socials. Discover the other artists and guests we've had the pleasure of collaborating with this May here, and stay tuned for more to come in June!