Common Ground · Culture × Tech · Singapore

The highlight

Makan Nation

Singapore is a nation that queues for its food, argues over the best chicken rice and saves a table with a packet of tissue. Makan Nation celebrates that hawker culture with a co-op kitchen that runs from the five-foot ways of the 1950s to SG100 in 2065. Cook the classics with your kakis on one keyboard or on your phones, and keep the dishes alive by serving them.

  • Four eras, from 1950s street stalls to SG100, each with its own kitchen, prices and music on the stall radio
  • A Hawker Passport across NEA's 129 real hawker centres, with a mentor before each stop and a quiz after it
  • Customers order in six languages, and the memories players leave come back as things customers say
  • Advanced: run a real hawker centre for two weeks, from menus and prices to finding successors for hawkers who retire
Open the stall See what feeds it

Four more machines for three tenses

Each one reads a slice of Singapore culture three ways: what the archives kept, what we do with it now, and what we leave for later. Three of them also feed the stall.

  1. Time Capsule Radio

    One dial from 1905 to 2065. Turn it and the decades go by.

    Past
    Shellac 78s and Rediffusion dialect dramas from the Internet Archive
    Present
    Live Singapore radio in four languages
    Future
    Songs sealed in a cookie tin until 2065

    Plays on the Makan Nation stall radio

    Switch it on

  2. Kopi Compiler

    Every kopitiam order is a tiny program. Type one and watch it pour.

    Past
    Where each word comes from: Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese and more
    Present
    Compile orders, build drinks, survive Uncle's Rush
    Future
    Teach uncle a new word and the language grows

    Writes the drink orders in Makan Nation

    Order something

  3. Block Birthday

    Every HDB block has a birthday. Find yours and throw it a party.

    Past
    The year it was built, what happened, and the songs on the radio
    Present
    Its age, floors, units and birthday twins
    Future
    A lease countdown and wishes for its 99th

    Blocks at or beside a hawker centre walk you into it in Makan Nation

    Find my block

  4. Musication

    A field guide to how music rhymes across cultures and decades.

    Past
    Tunes from China, Korea, Japan, Scotland and the US that share five notes, and modes that go by many names
    Present
    Ed Sheeran's twelve notes: why pop songs keep bumping into each other
    Future
    Compare any two recordings, decades apart, note by note
    Have a listen