OVER the last 20-plus years, Singapore's design scene has improved, but only marginally, so says Peter Zec, the founder of the influential Red Dot Award for design.

The professor, who is also head of the design association Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Germany, made his first trip to Singapore in 1991 when he was invited to showcase German design in an international design exhibition held at the former Design Centre on North Bridge Road. As a frequent visitor to Singapore since - there is also the Red Dot Museum here on Maxwell Road that opened in 2005 - Prof Zec is in a unique position to give an outsider's perspective. And it is mixed. Looking back, he says that Singapore's design scene has seen its share of "highs and lows".

One high, he recalls, was when the Design Centre opened in the early 1990s. But a low was registered only a few years later, when by the mid-1990s, the same Design Centre closed. In the years that followed, much has been done to boost the design industry, including a new National Design Centre at Middle Road that opened in 2014. But asked what he thinks of the design scene today, he replies frankly that it "has improved a little bit since 1991".