About
Song Yu is an interior designer who transforms spaces through strategic storytelling and precise design.
Balancing cultural heritage with contemporary relevance, Song Yu creates interiors that engage users, elevate experiences and deliver measurable impact.
Her work integrates concept, functionality and materiality to produce spaces that are both purposeful and memorable.
Second Shape: Between Tradition and Tomorrow
Located in Jalan Besar, a district once shaped by hardware stores and traditional trades, the area is gradually losing its identity as craft practices decline and younger generations disengage. This has resulted in a fragmented streetscape where heritage lacks visibility and relevance.
Second Shape responds to this by reactivating craftsmanship as a contemporary social experience through open workshops, interactive stations and flexible retail spaces that render the process of making visible and engaging. Elderly residents act as docents and storytellers, sharing personal histories while attracting tourists through culturally immersive experiences rooted in local heritage.
Through a day-to-night transformation—from production and learning spaces to a vibrant craft market—the project bridges tradition and contemporary practices, repositioning craftsmanship as an evolving identity within Singapore’s cultural tourism landscape.
By day, workshops are hosted in the space for active elderly residents to be engaged and trained as future docents, preserving and transferring craft knowledge.
By night, it transforms into a quick craft area, inviting tourists to customise their own pieces through simplified traditional techniques, turning heritage into an accessible, hands-on experience.
The reception marks the entry into the craft ecosystem, blending material references of Jalan Besar’s hardware heritage with contemporary design.
Functioning as both an information hub and a storytelling space, it introduces visitors to workshops and markets, while elderly docents share about local histories, grounding the experience in memory and transformation.
The gallery traces Jalan Besar’s craft heritage, with elderly storytellers guiding visitors through memory, making and evolving cultural identity.
The bar anchors nightlife with craft-inspired design, where musicians perform and create a vibrant atmosphere for socialising and cultural engagement.
The meeting room supports collaboration, where artisans and local craftsmen plan workshops and develop initiatives for craft preservation.
The workshop anchors daytime learning, where elderly craftsmen lead hands-on sessions, transferring traditional skills to younger generations.
It fosters intergenerational exchange, transforming making into a shared social experience while sustaining Jalan Besar’s craft heritage through active participation.
The overall atmosphere undergoes a metamorphosis from a warm, welcoming ambience to a cooler, more refined tone.
This transition is expressed through materiality—shifting from darker, tactile finishes such as dark concrete and Corten steel on the left, to lighter concrete and cooler metal surfaces on the right.
This diagram illustrates variations in human circulation patterns within the space between day and night use.
Guo Xuchu
Diana Ser Wei Xiu
Paula Pruistine Ridhuan Aman
Victoria Goh Ru Hui
Wang Haoyuan
Dylia Leong Wye San
