Why CapitaLand Is Filling Singapore Science Park with Puzzles, Pickleball and a Chain-Reaction Machine

Turn a wheel and a ball rolls through gears, chutes and levers, working its way down until it drops into a net and scores. The machine is called Goooaaalll, built by the playground design and equipment specialist CT-Art Creation in collaboration with the Rube Goldberg Institute for Innovation and Creativity. Designed to build fine motor skills in younger children and test problem-solving among older ones, the installation will spend the next three months at Geneo, a cluster built around biomedical research, laboratories and innovation businesses.

It is one of the opening pieces of REINVENTION: ALLPLAY, a design festival taking over Singapore Science Park from August 11 to November 22. The park is developed and managed by CapitaLand, one of Asia’s largest diversified real estate groups. Its listed investment-management business, CapitaLand Investment, had S$125 Bn in funds under management as on March 31.

Now in its second edition, the programme is supported by the DesignSingapore Council and curated by CapitaLand Development, the group’s privately held property-development arm, in partnership with the agency OuterEdit.

The initiative is driven by the core idea that play is a way of thinking rather than a break from thinking. “Play is one of the most universal languages we share,” said Ryan Tan, founder and executive creative director of OuterEdit. “Regardless of age, culture or background, it invites curiosity, imagination and connection.”

He said the festival set out to treat play “not simply as games, sports or leisure, but as a mindset”, and to show how it might become a catalyst for design and innovation.

The line-up ranges widely. Project Enigma, a social enterprise that has accumulated more than 3,000 mechanical puzzles and science toys, is bringing over 100 puzzles, with tours led by its founder, Vairavan Ramanathan.

STUCK Design is running a workshop where participants design an imaginary playground with AI as a collaborator rather than an instruction-taker. dConstruct Robotics asks people to work out what problem their robot would solve before they draw it. Observation House is teaching visitors to assemble a mushroom-shaped lamp from 3D-printed parts and then sketch their own. The Asian Civilisations Museum has donated a collection of traditional and contemporary board games.

Outside, a stretch of 7 Science Park Drive becomes PlayCourt, where visitors will test alternative formats and invent rules for basketball, football and pickleball. The movement-based experiments were developed with architect and urban strategist Calvin Chua, play designer Edmund Zhang and sports facility specialist The Ark.

A mural developed with the studio AnyhowPlayPlay will grow over the course of the festival, doubling as a record of what visitors say when asked what play is actually for. Weekend open-call programmes will include live DJs and community games.

From August 29, a strand called PlayMission opens with Ranger Buddies: The Planet Cup, an augmented-reality game by Mandai X in which children work in teams through environmental challenges and finish with a medal.

All of this sits inside Geneo, the life sciences and innovation cluster that CapitaLand officially opened on May 22. Totalling about S$1.4 Bn in investments, the development is jointly owned by CapitaLand Development and CapitaLand Ascendas REIT. Around 80,000 sq. m. of the development comprises purpose-built biomedical R&D infrastructure, flexible laboratories and innovation-ready Grade A business-park workspaces.

Its tenants include the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, the chocolate maker Barry Callebaut, the drug discovery firm Chugai Pharmabody Research, Henkel and the biotech incubator NSG Bio. CapitaLand says the wider park houses more than 350 companies and laboratories.

“We are excited to welcome REINVENTION back as part of Singapore Science Park’s ongoing evolution into a live-work-play innovation district,” said Chew Peet Mun, managing director for investment and development at CapitaLand Development (Singapore).

The company said it hoped the programme would create more opportunities for learning, discovery and camaraderie for the Science Park and the wider community.

Last year, the park did it differently for a short span. In September 2025, it made its debut as the fourth and newest Design District at Singapore Design Week, which ran for 11 days under the national theme, Nation by Design, as Singapore marked 60 years of independence. DENSO, KONE and Merck took part alongside local studios such as Green House and Tusitala.

This year, REINVENTION is being staged outside Singapore Design Week and will run for three months.

Admission is free, although some paid sessions sit on top. Rocketland is charging S$7 for a 30-minute inflatables pass, S$5 for a circuit-making workshop, or S$12 for both. Neeuro is asking S$5 a head for a brain fitness session for families with children aged six to 16.

Several opening-weekend workshops had yet to confirm their ticket prices when the programme was announced. PlayLab begins at The Canopy, a 3,000 sq. m. covered plaza, and remains there until August 23 before moving to other locations within Geneo for the rest of the festival.

Three months is a long time to retain anyone’s attention. Besides, this extended run comes as Singapore rethinks how to present design beyond a brief annual festival. The DesignSingapore Council said Singapore Design Week would be succeeded in 2027 by the inaugural Singapore Design Biennale, an expanded format greater in ambition, scale and international partnerships. By then, the park will already have learnt whether people return to a wall that fills in slowly or to a set of courts where the rules keep changing.