EMERGE 2024 — “These Precious Things”

Now in its third year, EMERGE continues to be a vital platform for showcasing emerging design talent from across Southeast Asia. In 2024, over 50 designers from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia will participate—more than half of whom are first-time exhibitors. This growing community reflects the richness and diversity of the region’s creative landscape, bringing together designers working across a wide spectrum of materials, disciplines, and methods.

Following the success of the first two editions, Suzy Annetta was once again invited by DesignSingapore Council to curate and produce the showcase. Under her direction, EMERGE has evolved into a dynamic platform for critical discourse, design experimentation, and regional collaboration.

This year’s theme, “These Precious Things,” poses a timely provocation: Who decides what is valuable? Designers have been invited to explore how we assign worth—commercial or sentimental—to materials, objects, skills, cultural practices, and memory. The curatorial framework encourages participants to question inherited systems of value and reflect on what we choose to preserve, discard, or celebrate.

Amidst the accelerating climate crisis, the theme also highlights the urgent environmental implications of consumption and production. With natural resources under strain, landfill sites overflowing, and plastic infiltrating our ecosystems, EMERGE 2024 asks: In a world already full of things, what is truly worth making now?

These Precious Things will be presented during Singapore Design Week within FIND – Design Fair Asia at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, continuing EMERGE’s mission to amplify new voices, challenge prevailing narratives, and showcase the future of design in Southeast Asia.