Forget London’s Natural History Museum – our very own Unnatural History Museum is where you want to go. This pop-up exhibition at the National Design Centre is part of Singapore Design Week 2025, which runs from 11th-21st September 2025, and explores how Singapore has grown in the last 60 years thanks to our design spirit and creativity.
While Singapore Design Week ends on 21st September, the Unnatural History Museum of Singapore exhibition will continue to run till 26th October 2025. Here’s what you can expect:
Image adapted from: @_kineticsg via Instagram
Our Little Red Dot has scarce natural resources, but has risen astronomically from a Third- to First World nation in its short 60 years of independence. Singapore Design Week 2025 honours the many unconventional and creative ways in which we’ve made that happen as part of our SG60 celebrations.
Image adapted from: @_kineticsg via Instagram
Just like how Singapore has turned our lack of natural resources into prosperity, the Unnatural History Museum of Singapore defies all expectations when it comes to its exhibits. You’ll find taxidermy specimens, habitat dioramas, and fossils – but not the ones you’re thinking of.
Image adapted from: @_kineticsg via Instagram
There’s hybrid flora, robotic fauna, reimagined landscapes, and unusual habits that are in so many ways uniquely Singaporean – all reframed as historical artefacts because there’s no doubt about them being part and parcel of our history.
Find cyborg roaches at the Unnatural History Museum of Singapore.
Image adapted from: Home Team Science & Technology Agency
Image credit: @_kineticsg via Instagram
The Natural History Museum has Hope, the blue whale skeleton; we’ve got our very own, albeit nameless, Merlion skeleton taking centre stage at the Unnatural History Museum of Singapore – measuring in at a whopping 6m tall.
Image credit: @jonathanyuen via Instagram
While you’ll find alternative foods on specimen dishes at the Singapore Design exhibition, you’ll want to pop over to The Sausage of the Future: Singapore Edition, where one of the world’s oldest designed foods has been given a new lease on life, with sustainable, responsible, and creative eating at its core.
Image credit: @jonathanyuen via Instagram
All of the new-age sausage concepts that can be seen at this exhibition were inspired by our food culture and designed with local food makers such as Huber’s Butchery and culinary anthropologist Nithiya Laila. The exhibit also features sculptures of these sausages and their cross sections, developed by Studio Carolien Niebling.
Don’t say bojio because for 1 night only, on 12th September 2025, they’re running a free tasting session at 6pm of these futuristic hotdogs, including an otak sausage wrapped in fish maw skin. If you miss this tasting, you can still imagine what these sausages taste like, since the pop-up will run till 19th October 2025.
Strange Terrains at Singapore Science Park.
Image credit: AlvieAlive
This year, Singapore Design Week 2025 is spread over 4 precincts: Bras Basah and Bugis, Marina, Orchard, and the new addition of Singapore Science Park. Of note is the inaugural Singapore Science Park edition, which transforms Geneo @ Singapore Science Park into a living laboratory, exploring how Singapore has employed design thinking in urban planning, healthcare, sustainability and more.
Care Pavilion at Millenia Walk.
Image credit: Marina Central
Over in the Marina Design District, highlights include the Design Pavilion at Millenia Walk, put together using the iconic Unica Plastic Stool, and an inclusive Indoor Playground at Marina Square for neurodivergent children.
We ought to celebrate and honour how Singapore has rewritten the script when it comes to thinking out of the box and propelling us almost light-years into the future. National Day may be over, but commemorating our nation’s meteoric rise and accomplishments shouldn’t stop.
More to do this weekend:
Cover image adapted from: Eugene Fidelis Soh via LinkedIn, @jonathanyuen via Instagram, Home Team Science & Technology Agency
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