Project collaborators gathered at the completed Whimsical Classroom entrance installation

Community installation · Singapore · 2024

Wander Around:
A Whimsical Classroom

Repurposed cardboard became an oversized classroom—part public artwork, part creative workshop, and part invitation to talk about sustainability and mental wellness.

01 · Story

A classroom made larger than life.

Created with Singapore Polytechnic and the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, the installation reframed familiar classroom objects as playful prompts for imagination, conversation, and shared expression.

Wander Around: A Whimsical Classroom welcomed visitors from 18 to 27 October 2024. A gigantic table and chair, a giant protractor, a four-metre paper airplane, graduation bears, and a 13.2-metre noticeboard transformed the venue into a world seen from a child’s perspective.

Every major element was built from repurposed cardboard. The material made sustainability tangible: waste was not presented as an abstract problem, but as something that could be reconsidered, redesigned, and given another life.

WHEN18–27 Oct 2024

WHERESingapore Chinese Cultural Centre

FOCUSSustainability + mental wellness

The fabrication team seated beside the completed oversized cardboard table and chair — The fabrication team with the installation’s oversized table and chair. Photo: SCCC, 2024.

02 · Experience

Scale opened the door. Participation gave it meaning.

Visitors did more than look. They moved through the installation, left thoughts and drawings, and encountered simple robotics as a friendly bridge between creativity and engineering.

See differently

Oversized classroom objects disrupted the ordinary and made the familiar feel strange, playful, and worth noticing again.

Express openly

The large noticeboard became a shared canvas where young visitors could draw, write, and make their emotions visible.

Build together

A cardboard robotics workshop let participants turn recycled material into working models through hands-on experimentation.

Two visitors standing inside an oversized semicircular cardboard protractor — A giant protractor turned a familiar classroom tool into an inhabitable frame.

A live cardboard robotics demonstration in front of the graduation-bear installation — Cardboard robotics brought movement and engineering into the exhibition. Photo: SCCC, 2024.

A visitor filming two interactive Teacher Kaki cardboard robots — The interactive Teacher Kaki characters connected playful storytelling with technology.

03 · Making

From flat sheets to a walk-through world.

Large forms were cut, folded, assembled, and finished at Singapore Polytechnic’s Fablab before being transported and composed as one coherent environment.

The fabrication team standing beside a four-metre cardboard paper airplane in the Fablab — The four-metre paper airplane taking shape with the fabrication team in the Fablab.

01 · STRUCTURE

Design for lightness and scale.

Cardboard made it possible to build monumental objects that remained comparatively light, transportable, and materially honest. Folded planes and interlocking parts created strength without disguising how the work was made.

02 · ENVIRONMENT

Build a world, not isolated props.

Hand-cut foliage, classroom furniture, sculptures, and small interactive characters shared one visual language. Repetition across the trees and landscape tied the individual pieces into a complete scene.

A group of freestanding cardboard trees assembled in the Fablab — Freestanding cardboard trees assembled and tested before installation.

Two makers attaching coloured leaves to a cardboard tree canopy — Attaching coloured leaves to the tree canopy during fabrication.

A finished cardboard tree with layered brown branches and green leaves — A finished tree shows the layered branch structure and hand-applied foliage.

04 · Gallery

People completed the picture.

The finished work became a backdrop for collaboration, workshops, demonstrations, and the small moments of discovery that public installations are made for.