On 8 August, we ran Little Architects of Temasek Shophouse during Temasek Shophouse’s launch weekend, a custom workshop built around the four buildings that make up 28 Orchard Road. It grew out of our heritage paper-building workshops, and became a way for participants to get to know this building up close.

Temasek Shophouse is actually four buildings joined into one: a 1920s Art Deco car showroom, a former film distribution house, a neo-classical townhouse and a tropical modern shophouse. Participants started with a guided tour to learn each building’s story, then built their own miniature paper model to take home.

We handled everything from the research and guided tour to turning each building into a foldable paper template. We also designed the streetscape base, stickers, story cards and kit box, with every template going through rounds of building, unfolding and rebuilding before it was ready.