Amid Singapore’s national drive to increase productivity, RACE (Robotics Automation Centre of Excellence) seeks to incentivise manufacturers to embrace robotics, to “future-proof” their businesses. The exhibition design is characterized by modularity and is influenced by the aesthetics of precision and dynamism.

The brief for the laboratory space required flexibility to showcase a changing series of modular robots as well as to be used for hands-on training and lectures. It needed to be a continuous open space, yet conducive for small clusters for hands-on training. Also, the entire facility had to be “transportable”, for PBA to relocate in 2 years’ time, built under S$300,000, and constructed within a tight timeframe.

For maximum flexibility and eventual relocation, we introduced a "second skin”, developed to seamlessly create a dynamic space by deconstructing the ceiling and wall planes into an array of facets. Each facet comprises stacked layers of hand-cut aluminium hollow tubing, rotated in multi directions, with custom LED lighting strips.

The skin acts as a natural sectioning device to create enclaves for small group settings. The aluminium screen cloaks the necessary but unsightly MEP services while allowing ease of access. We tested a variety of sizes for the metal tubes, weighing aesthetics and cost, to optimize the spacing for sufficient air-conditioning, yet hiding the unsightly wires visually. The metal framework can be demounted from the base structure for easy relocation.