Yip Yuen Hong is a Founding Principal of Singapore firm ip:li Architects. His practise is driven by his curiosity about the world and his solution-based approach to design. This situates the architect not as a utopian visionary or mere dutiful professional, but as equal parts alchemist and realist who operates not through grand gestures but with wit and clarity in a personable way. ip:li Architects is interested in an architecture that transforms limits into catalysts for invention that help to construct meaningful, simple and timeless architecture. Meanwhile the fading differentiation between cities and neighbourhoods has spurred questions on the uniqueness of a Singapore identity as well as a series of what-ifs. For ip:li, this often teases out architectural play from the collective embodied observations and desires into programs and typologies. What arises is a speculative inquiry that is fundamentally open-ended, non-linear and inquisitive.

Photography: Marc Tan | Studio Periphery.