Established in 1979, the ULI Global Awards for Excellence recognises truly superior development efforts in the private, public and non-profit sectors. Winning projects represent the highest standards of achievement in the development industry and the Awards for Excellence recognise the full development process of a project including its impact on the community and not just its architecture or design.

Developed and managed by SG Enable, Enabling Village is recognised with five other projects from around the world – such as Essex Crossing (United States) – as winners of the 2022 ULI Global Awards for Excellence. These winners were selected from a pool of 26 global finalists who had first won in the highly competitive regional competitions that saw a total of 152  submissions. Earlier in June this year, Enabling Village was selected as one of 13 winners of the Asia Pacific edition of the Awards, and it was the only winning project from Singapore.

The Global Awards jury lauded Enabling Village for creating a dedicated and supportive environment for people with disabilities to receive job training and education. “The project  demonstrates a successful model for integrating disability services and accessible design into an existing community,” it said.

In his speech, Minister Desmond Lee said that the award bears testament to Singapore’s values of liveability and inclusiveness.  He shared with the audience of the Ministry’s ongoing efforts to create liveable spaces island-wide from the commitment to an additional 1,000ha of green spaces over the next 10 – 15 years; the development of Therapeutic Gardens specially designed to cater to a diverse range of conditions such as cognitive impairments, ADHD, dementia, stroke and mood disorders; to the enhancement of the Accessibility Fund in August 2022 which provides grants to private building owners who undertake voluntary upgrading to improve the inclusiveness of their buildings.

Minister launched the “Design Playbook for Inclusive Spaces” during the ceremony to mark the start of Enabling Village’s extension plans.  The playbook by SG Enable and STUCK Design distils key principles and ideas on how spaces can be more inclusive, beyond physical accessibility.

After the award presentation, Ms Ku shared SG Enable’s plans around the expansion of Enabling Village to do more and better for persons with disabilities and their caregivers, by prototyping more social innovations.  Through the extension, SG Enable would work with cross-sector partners to achieve the 4Es:

• Enable persons with disabilities and their caregivers to live more independently and thrive
• Incubate disability-inclusive Enterprises
• Envision new and evolving social innovations to support persons with disabilities and their caregivers
• Engage the community to build a more inclusive Singapore.

ULI thanks our members for spending the afternoon at this special ceremony to personally congratulate SG Enable.  We continue as one to shape the future of the built environment for transformative impact in communities worldwide.