24 Hours in Singapore with Three-D Conceptwerke

Go to the project page of any interior designer's website and chances are you'll spot a theme or two. A look. Or, if not a look, then some common threads that in many cases make that project immediately recognisable as a [insert interior designer] project. Is this a quality painstakingly cultivated by the designers themselves or is it simply a symptom of having done one thing very well and every one of their clients coming to them because they want that thing too? Hard to say. Probably a bit of both. Whether it's a bold command of colour, a dedicated celebration of existing materials, or even just a light playfulness, these threads are there. And rightly or wrongly, in the world of interior design and the age of Instagram, these images and threads are how most of us decide whether we're picking up what these designers are putting down.

All of this is why I'm immediately intrigued when I notice the distinct lack of an aesthetic thread uniting the projects documented on the website of Singapore multidisciplinary studio, Three-D Conceptwerke. Dess and I are chatting over a video call to lock in the final details of our scheduled day together when I fly to Singapore later this week and I raise this point of curiosity with him.

"Your projects are all so different," I say. "You don't have a look."

Dess appears rather bemused by this.

"We design for people, not for ourselves," he explains. "Every home belongs to the client, so it reflects their life, not ours. What we bring is a common philosophy – contextual sensitivity, human understanding, and the use of meaningful, purposeful materials." This is what Dess's clients come to him and his team for, he tells me. Not "a beautiful image", but rather a home that truly reflects and enhances their lifestyle. "They want functionality and authenticity – a design that feels both practical and soulful."

In order to realise this for his clients, Dess asks each of them a rather refreshing question: "What does fruitful living look like to you?" It's a question that reminds me of my long-ago pilates instructor who attentively asked me every time we met at 7am: "how's the body feeling today?". Such important questions, both of them, and yet it always struck me how little care and attention I gave to considering the one about my body and associated wellbeing unless Donna was prompting me to do so. To this end, how often do any of us pause and ponder what a truly fulfilling life looks like to us? What a gift, I reflect, to have an interior designer in front of you whose self-appointed role is to design a home for you that supports the life you want to lead, promotes your pleasures and interests – a home that is a positive force in your life.

Dess Chew co-founded Three-D Conceptwerke with Terence Soh and Cynthia Koe 20 years ago and today it's a practice (they prefer "collective") of six designers with Cynthia steering the ship as office manager. Dess tells us that he and Cynthia have worked together for so long that they are "like siblings". As someone who has worked directly with my actual sibling for more than a decade, I immediately recognise the short-hand communication style and casual brusqueness that only comes with that kind of long-established and unspoken mutual affection and regard. Cynthia is an attentive and generous presence from the moment we arrive at their studio, even popping out to a specific store to buy a specific example of a traditional local sweet she wants me to try. Formerly a run-down 1930s shophouse, the Three-D Conceptwerke studio in the multicultural Kampong Glam neighbourhood – like the project page on their website – is genre defying. Ornate arm chairs sit alongside rustic timber tables and exposed industrial shelving made from old window grilles. A cluster of striking mercury-like pendant lights were added because they "caught our eye" Dess tells us. Cynthia has colonised the concrete breezeblock wall that divides her office space from the kitchen area with an eclectic and charming collection of figurines and ornaments. While no two Three-D Conceptwerke projects look alike on the surface, concrete breezeblocks do make cameos in at least three of them. So, far from a look but certainly a clue to the studio's preference for humble and unpretentious materials.

The studio renovation itself is light-touch, concentrating its energy on air circulation, natural light and carving out pleasant and flexible spaces ideal for collaboration and relaxation. It's so light-touch in fact, that when Three-D Conceptwerke took over the space, they discovered a small tree, brazenly sprouting out of a crack in the brick wall of their kitchen area. The tree remains (it was there first, after all) and needs to be watered regularly. This process is not a simple one, or at least, not a simple one if you want to avoid drenching everything below. Over time this watering ritual has caused the steps of the steel staircase beneath to rust. It's not a "beautiful image" but if a visitor to the studio asks anyone at Three-D Conceptwerke, 'why are your steps all rusty?' It's a rather beautiful story, and perhaps one that tells you more about Dess and this studio than a pass across their project page ever will.

During my visit to Singapore, I'm pointed to a recent story in the local newspaper, The Straits Times about the sameness of millennials' apartments in Singapore: "Cream walls, beige furniture: Why do Singapore millennial homes look the same?" the article asks. "Mujicore" and "Japandi" are cited as the dominant trends at play. Separately, a new friend made during my trip tells me there are a lot of "Pinterest interior designers" in Singapore. Not just Singapore, I think. Against the tide or not, Dess and his team at Three-D Conceptwerke have actively worked to establish a reputation for themselves as anti-trend. A recent Instagram reel that teases with a headline of "Trends for 2026" will perhaps disappoint some viewers. It is but a trick.

"We do not follow trends. In fact, we do not believe in trends," Dess shares.

Though Tadao Ando is cited as an important influence and role model for his command of light and timeless design, the resources and sources of inspiration that Dess typically returns to are much humbler and closer to home. Dess is most inspired by images and insights into how real people live. The enormous book he digs out to show us – HDB: Homes of Singapore by Eitaro Ogawa, Tamae Iwasaki and Tomohisa Miyauchi (see pages 118–129 for the full story behind this fascinating book) is littered with page markers. It's clear this is a regular and valued point of reference. This everydayness is what interests and animates Dess. Our first meal together (one of my most memorable in Singapore) is nasi campur ("economic rice") at one of his favourite regular lunchtime haunts. For a criminally small amount of money, you are served a generous heapful of rice on a plastic tray lined with deli paper and then allowed to select from the accompanying dishes such as fried chicken, braised pork liver, stirfried kangkong (water spinach), chicken curry (all of which made their way to my tray when I ask Dess what I should try). Dess eats here regularly, in fact, with home-style quality cooking like this so readily on offer throughout Singapore and at such a small price, he and his wife rarely cook at home. I ask Dess what he would miss most if he ever moved away from Singapore and without skipping a beat he answers "the food".

After lunch Dess wants to show us where he goes to get his creative juices flowing. First stop Basheer Graphic Books¹ ("books open our minds") followed by a visit to one of his favourite "hardware" stores, Value Hub Department Store in Tiong Bahru. To me it looks more like a hardware store combined with a dollar store – rows and rows of shelves and baskets stuffed full of everything from colourful plastic colanders and children's toys to handwoven palm leaf fans and cleaning products. There are hardware store things here too and light fittings and trolleys and, well, just about anything non-perishable that you may want or need. "I'm always fascinated by the tools, materials and possibilities you find here. It reflects my belief that good design often starts from humble, functional things," Dess says. "My upbringing taught me to value resourcefulness and simplicity."

After scouring the shelves at Value Hub, we retire to another favourite haunt of Dess's, Old Habits – a deeply nostalgic coffee shop where every surface, wall and inch of ceiling hanging space is crammed with vintage toys, retro gadgets and paraphernalia. Throughout our morning and afternoon spent with Dess, nostalgia has felt like our constant companion. It's a very different experience from the shiny, high-tech, fast-paced Singapore I was (perhaps naively?) expecting. There are two distinct groups in Singapore, Dess tells me. Those who are chasing trends and the latest tech, and those who crave a slower pace of life.

“In Singapore, it’s very fast-paced. We see two groups – one chasing things, sometimes unrealistically, and another group stepping back, trying to slow down and reflect.”

As Dess sees it, because Singapore is so small, when you move from one place to another, you often see the same things repeated again and again. The first group doesn't want to keep seeing things repeated. To them, repetition is boring. "They feel there is no energy in that kind of life, and they begin to look for something different," he says.

"I think this is not only happening in Singapore. It is a global thing," Dess reflects. "The younger generation is separating into these two different ways of thinking."

Born and raised in Singapore, Dess believes this was an upbringing that conditioned him to be an adaptive creature. Since colonial times, Singapore has "reclaimed" land – from its sea, swamps and wetlands – to ensure enough space for its people and its industrial expansion. Around 80 per cent of Singapore's population lives in high-rise apartment buildings, so the sense that space is at a premium is difficult to escape. "To adapt is the main key," Dess tells us. He sees his role as one of creating "frameworks" for his clients that are timeless in their design but flexible by nature.

"As humans grow, our needs and behaviours change, but the environment doesn't change as quickly. If design is too rigid, it becomes obsolete," Dess offers. "Rather than rigid solutions, I prefer to create frameworks that people can inhabit, adapt, and make their own. That way, people bring in their own habits, cultures and personalities, and the space evolves with them."

And this all comes back to fruitful living of course. When I ask what fruitful living looks like for Dess, he talks about the feeling of moving easily about his environment and drawing pleasure from it. Being at peace with his surroundings and enjoying the small moments: a morning coffee and a simple breakfast, for instance.

"But of course there are different interpretations of fruitful living. Some people like to have a very busy lifestyle. Some people like to have a lot of connections and time with friends, and they find that very fruitful."

"And others, in a more calming manner, like to live alone by themselves, understanding themselves."

Dess remarks that the piece of the puzzle that often gets forgotten is that this – the idea of what fruitful living looks like to any given person – can change with age, circumstance or the seasons. His belief is that people's character changes every three to five years. If this is true and a home is not designed to respond to this evolution, how can one continue to live in that home in a fruitful manner?

"I would rather create a nice understanding of the shell of a space and allow the internal space to be very mobile, because we are humans. We change. If something is designed for that mobility, it allows us to change the whole space without needing to change the whole shell."

Take Dess's Waterloo Street project perhaps the most literal (and extreme) example of this philosophy in action – and one that he describes as "very challenging". His clients Betty and Marcus were very up front about their desire for maximum flexibility. The apartment needed to be the ideal home for the couple but also flexible enough to host large dinner parties or friends and family overnight. "So we listened properly and we listened hard," Dess says. All walls were removed to create the 'shell' and rather than filling it with built-in storage, Dess designed a system of sleek cabinets on wheels. These cabinets can line one of the perimeter walls of the apartment or can be used to divide it. As a pair of restless creatives, it suits Betty and Marcus to a tee. "They love the ever-changing nature of it. In fact, it keeps their lifestyle alive."

"The cabinets are all metal too, so you can stick magnets on them. Which allows them to stick notes using magnets; to hang pictures and clothes. In fact I saw pictures of them celebrating a birthday with decorations attached with magnets. It's enjoyable."

Wheels appear too, in Three-D Conceptwerke's Interim Spaces project in Bukit Batok, Singapore too. Inspired by a New York loft space, all the apartment's furniture can be easily moved about the space and "rearranged by its inhabitants to allow them to live in their own fruitful manner." In this instance, Dess and his team had 38 sqm (409sqft) to work with rather than the more generous 59sqm (635sqft) footprint of Waterloo Street. The tight floor plan and a tight budget focused the design on low intervention but high impact solutions: a multifunctional storage bench organises books, a TV, artwork and additional seating into one elegant piece of joinery along one length of the apartment's living space. The facing wall houses the apartment's bulk storage, wardrobe and a hydraulic Murphy bed. These features free up the apartment's main living space for … well … living.

A regular complaint of people who have never lived in a thoughtfully designed small footprint apartment is that a home like this has no room for hobbies. Dess's social worker client loves to paint – Chinese calligraphy is a particular passion of hers – and Dess's design supports these passions with a simple gesture: a custom dining table on wheels with storage in its undercarriage that doubles as a flexible art space when inspiration strikes.

Culture and climate pop up repeatedly during my meandering conversations with Dess. They are inescapable influences in his line of work and local context. He's a strong believer that the homes they design at Three-D Conceptwerke should not fight Singapore's tropical climate, but embrace it. Louvres and barn-style doors (see Waterloo Street) appear in several of the studio's projects, promoting passive-leaning and energy efficient ways of keeping living spaces comfortable.

"Singapore is located in the tropics, so it is always hot, always humid. Because of that, we have to consider materials very carefully. We cannot simply take something designed for a continental climate and apply it directly in the tropics. We should instead embrace our surroundings and enjoy them."

Singapore's hawker markets are perhaps the most accessible (and rewarding) way to see this kind of thinking in action – open sided structures promote cross ventilation, and wall and ceiling mounted fans do their bit too. These markets are also a tantalising window into Singapore's cultural mix with Malay, Chinese and Indian food on offer at the many stalls. Dess chooses one such market – Telok Blangah Crescent Market and Food Centre – close to his home, for breakfast together the morning after our first meeting. This is when I learn that the best hawker markets are those with 'wet markets' attached. (Of course!).

"Singapore is a very multiracial country," Dess explains. "But the amazing part is, in those years when everyone migrated over to Singapore, they brought along their different villages, their different cultures and brought them into our small little island. And thank God it's a small little island, because this means we got to understand all these different races even faster."

"It's just like neighbours," he says. "We greet each other. We learn from each other. We see these different cultures, their homes and how they live."

"It's not easy, I would say, different cultures infusing, accepting each other, staying under one roof."

Dess tours us around the produce stalls before we settle in for our breakfast and kopi (coffee). We're largely here to try his favourite dish – what he considers a "light breakfast": "carrot cake". Or, more accurately, chai tow kway (not to be confused with the dish much more likely to be familiar to non-Singaporean readers, char kway teow). This is not the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting that I grew up with, but a dish imported to Singapore by Teochew immigrants from Southern China in the late 19th century. I personally would not describe it as "light" but it is undeniably delicious – a slightly sweet but very savoury stir fry of 'daikon cakes', eggs, garlic and preserved daikon. The gentleman who makes it for us strides over for a chat, either he's clocked our camera or is drawn by the novelty of us being the only non-locals in the entire market. He brings a laminated certificate with him, and with Dess translating, proudly explains it represents his government ordained authority to train others in the preparation of authentic chai tow kway. Why would he do that though, he says. He'll teach people like us, but not locals, he says. They'll steal his recipe.

Dess says the cultural diversity of Singapore pushes him to think creatively about how to intervene in spaces – through materials and functions that reflect the people who need to live with them and respond to their way of living.

“We meet many different kinds of clients. They may have adapted to life in Singapore, but we try to go further and create a home that helps them live well in this climate and culture.”

One of his clients, a Chinese family with Peranakan ancestry, asked him to design a home with a "communal" spirit. "The word communal in the Asian context – in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia – is the word kampong," Dess explains. This Malay term might be used to describe a traditional village or cluster of houses but also signifies the character of a close-knit community. The bedrooms for the three children who live here have been organised side by side with interconnecting doors between them but also the ability to share and divide their space as they wish. With little interest in air conditioning, and a preference for "natural breezes" inspiration was taken from Singapore's old shophouses and their simple but highly effective approaches to cross ventilation. Decorative breeze blocks and louvres used extensively throughout the apartment, between rooms, not only welcome natural airflow and the exchange of light, but also to allow chatter, laughter or the gentle hum of music to gently float between them too, just as they might in a cluster of village huts.

You should know that Dess's clients love him. Many of his clients have become his friends in fact. This must bring great satisfaction, I suggest. Clearly there is a lot of fruitful living going on. So, as a seasoned interior designer with happy clients and such a clear and assured philosophy, I'm curious to know what cautionary tales Dess can offer the young folk coming up in his profession. What is the biggest mistake he has ever made in his career? "When we were younger, we were more selfish – focused on how things look, not how people live," he says. As I learnt from Dess though, people change – every three to five years apparently – so with Three-D Conceptwerke celebrating its 20th birthday this year, it's fair to say those "selfish" years are long gone.

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^{1 Again so brilliant we had to write about this too. See You Are What You Read.}