Office tower designs do not usually cause hearts to flutter, but Toyo Ito has risen to the challenge with wit, humour and empathy writes Huang Nickmatul.
September 21st, 2011
The release of any real estate for development in land-scarce Singapore is an event of some excitement. The release of the Market Street plot of land is doubly so due to its location in the heart of Singapore’s financial and business district – and the fact that it’s a building that’s being designed by Toyo Ito.
Ito’s creation is a 40-storey-tall pillar of – almost quite literally – green. The office tower features greenery on every floor, extensive sky gardens on 3 levels, a Sky Forest on the roof as well as considerable vertical greenery.
“When building up the city, the relationship of the people with the trees became very much limited. Designing this building, I wanted to revive the relationship between greenery, buildings and people,” says Ito.
The many gardens and the Sky Forest will be functional spaces: for example, a restaurant will be nestled within the Sky Forest and the ground floor will feature a sheltered public plaza with art sculptures.
“Compared with Japan, Singapore has a lot of green but it’s different inside the buildings,” Ito muses. “With the Market Street tower, I want to create more blurring of the relationship between the inside and the outside.”
The building will have several other innovative eco elements such as a double-skin high-performance glass energy-efficient facade. An empty core will also run down the centre of the tower: the cool, cleaner air that is produced by the trees will be captured and sent to each floor through this void.
“This is a very important concept for us. We think of the building as ’breathing’. There are many other projects with green terraces, but the Sky Forest feature actually produces cleaner, cool air that we can push through the building. The building itself becomes like a tree in the city.”
When completed, the tower will have office spaces with a floor-to-ceiling height of 3.2 metres, one of the highest in office towers within the Central Business District (CBD). This allows for larger windows that gives a feeling of spaciousness and enables more natural light to enter.
The building is targeted for completion in the late half of 2014. According to the developer, CapitaLand, the Market Street office tower will be the only significant new Grade A office building in the CBD district completed at that time.
Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
toyo-ito.co.jp
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
In this brand new exhibition, GH Commercial’s custom carpet solutions help local artists create joyful installations that each tell a unique story.
An exciting new collaboration involving Autex Acoustics, Willie Weston and Lisa Waup colourfully brings First Nations design to high-performance acoustics.
Marylou Cafaro’s first trendjournal sparked a powerful, decades-long movement in joinery designs and finishes which eventually saw Australian design develop its independence and characteristic style. Now, polytec offers all-new insights into the future of Australian design.
Channelling the enchanting ambience of the Caffè Greco in Rome, Budapest’s historic Gerbeaud, and Grossi Florentino in Melbourne, Ross Didier’s new collection evokes the designer’s affinity for café experience, while delivering refined seating for contemporary hospitality interiors.
As we enter the age of storytelling and empathetic leadership, what are the intangibles that feed a workplace’s culture? Alice Blackwood speaks with Amanda Stanaway, Dr Amantha Imber and Nat Cagilaba.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
Pedrali’s new headquarters is more than a dynamic, modern workplace. It is a space in which the Italian company can display its wares in the best possible light.
The latest iteration of Tanatap deploys walls as a key architectural device to create both a cooler microclimate and elevated spatial experience.