•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

Step into most museums, and red ropes, security guards and signs will remind you to keep your hands off the valuable, fragile exhibits. For those who crave a more interactive approach, a design museum in Singapore is pushing the limits with an unusual philosophy — not just allowing hands on, but actually encouraging it.

With a collection of the world’s best design products, the Red Dot Museum in Singapore is filled with surprises; one room is completely stocked with colorful Tupperware, while another showcases innovative bathroom facilities.

Together, the exhibitions help reveal how exceptional and innovative design can influence daily life, and how products we now take for granted were novelties only a decade ago.

The museum’s name pays homage to the Red Dot award, an annual international design competition in Germany that ranks among the world’s largest and toughest for the field. In the world of design, the Red Dot label stands for excellence.

Besides showcasing the best design products in a museum in Germany, Red Dot is also present in Singapore — a nice coincidence, since the nation is sometimes referred to as the “little red dot,” appearing on maps as a small crimson dot at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula.

The Red Dot Museum in Singapore is nestled in a red-brick colonial building on Maxwell Road.

Once the headquarters for the traffic police, the building is known today as “Red Dot Traffic.” With more than 1,400 square meters of space, it houses Asia’s largest collection of international contemporary design, and also gives an interesting insight into the history of product design.

During a recent trip to Singapore, I decided to make my first visit to the museum. I was prepared for a crowd — Red Dot attracts 30,000 visitors each year, according to its Web site — but it was quiet on the Monday afternoon I visited.

Keeping me company were a few tourists and a group of elementary school students on a field trip. Given the museum’s interactive philosophy, the youngsters were certainly enjoying themselves, taking full advantage of the freedom to reach out and touch the sights.

The interactive quality of the museum shines when Red Dot hosts its monthly Market of Artists and Designers. The museum becomes an artistic playground and a forum for creative exchanges, as artists and designers present their work, listen to live music performances, participate in workshops and enjoy culinary delights.

But for me, the museum’s biggest draw was an exhibit dedicated to the winners of the 2010 Red Dot award in the design concept category. Out of 3,023 submissions, 180 were awarded the coveted Red Dot.

For now, the submissions are just concepts, but they provide an interesting glimpse of what life may look like in the near future. Q-Tips, a pregnancy test for blind women and a project called “Daily You” were among the more outstanding and creative ideas on view.

Safer cotton swabs were designed to reduce the risk of damaging your eardrum, while the pregnancy test lets women learn their results by touch.

“The Daily You” is something like an unconscious diary. It is a mirror with a camera built in, and it takes photographs of its users every day to capture their most natural impressions and movements over a certain period of time.

The winner, however, was the Citrus football developed by two designers from Mexico. An air-less ball, it uses advanced materials to bounce just like an inflated ball, and compiles electronic statistics like kick force, travel speed and ball location.

After spending about an hour in the museum, happily observing and touching the design products, I stopped at the gift shop to see some of the exhibited items and Red Dot products on sale.

For those who have a little free time to spare, I recommend enjoying the shops and cafes in the Red Dot building. With so much to see, taste and touch, a visit to the Red Dot is definitely worthwhile.

Red Dot Museum Singapore
28 Maxwell Road
Singapore
Tel: 65 6327 8027