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The island of Singapore has been enlarged by 10
percent since 1967 at the expense of its topography. A large undeveloped tract
of real estate formed by landfill is adjacent to the city financial center and
surrounds a body of water known as Marina Bay. The Urban Development Authority
(URA) of Singapore has created a master plan for the area that projects a volume
and density of construction that would dwarf the existing downtown. One parcel
of the landfill measuring 37,000 square meters that faces Marina bay and
downtown Singapore is the site for this project.
The site is planned for 400,000 square meters of development. Of this space
70 percent is programmed for office use, 20 percent for serviced apartments, and
the remainder for restaurants, retail, entertainment, and other amenities that
serve the building tenants. A parking garage will fill the footprint of the site
on two levels below grade. Although Singapore skyline features many office
towers of fifty or more floors, a height limit of thirty stories has been
imposed on this site.
The URA Master Plan envisions a group of several thirty story buildings on
the site. The bank program however, requires some very large floor plates of
6,000-8,000 square meters and connections between floors to allow better
interdepartmental communication and circulation. This yields a plan with a row
of service cores joined periodically by large floors. The gaps that occur
between floors of conventional dimensions have been programmed as gardens
featuring amenities ordinarily found only at ground level. Since the links
between the cores are to be column free, a system of steel trusses three stories
deep that span about 70 meters has been developed. This structure brings load to
the ground efficiently and in addition, allows the building section to be
discontinuous because the trusses carry groups of three floors independently. A
result of the flexible section is office floors with varied lease depths that
will accommodate the variety of office layouts demanded today and can be changed
over time to accommodate new plan configurations. The curved slab of the office
building, derived from the demands of the building program, is sited at the edge
of Marina Bay. Viewed from downtown, it has a monumental presence because of its
unity, yet its rippled elevation with large garden terraces has a scale
appropriate to the neighborhood. To provide a column-free office perimeter and
to avoid the corrosiveness of the humid marine environment, the steel truss
structure occupies a meter-wide void space created by the layers of a
double-skin curtain wall. Fitted with clear glass, the double -skin facade
improves the energy efficiency of the building by creating a buffer zone of
circulating air that is between the temperature of the interior and the
exterior.
Behind the office slab is a seven-story structure that provides a transition
to a planned smaller scale residential neighborhood. The building is comprised
of a similar vocabulary of components as the office, but their orientation is
rotated ninety degrees to correspond to the site. The open terraces in the slab
reappear as courtyards in the low building to allow daylight into the center of
the block. The undulations of the Marina Bay façade are seen again in the form
of the topography that defines the character of the seventh-level roof.
The form of this office project reflects influences that are both internal
and external. The plan and section have curved, irregular profiles that provide
planning flexibility while echoing the play of light reflected off the bay. The
openings in the office slab create spaces for interaction demanded by the
program while creating framed views through the building. It is hoped that by
imbedding exciting public spaces high in the section of the office block
integrated with residential units the monotony of a conventional stratified
development will be overcome.
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