21 Carpenter

21 Carpenter is a 48-room heritage boutique hotel at the gateway to the historic Chinatown district, near the Singapore River. The hotel is built around a group of four conserved shophouses from 1936, with a contemporary rear extension.

The design of 21 Carpenter pays homage to the building’s history as a remittance house, the birthplace of Singapore as an international financial hub. An important part of the history of the building, beautifully poetic phrases from remittance letters, sent home by Chinese labourers, were incorporated into the art façade of the new extension, and inside the hotel.

The perforated aluminium art façade panels act as a skin for the building which fully shades the inner envelope, preventing it from heating up in the sun. Photovoltaic panels on the roof help the hotel produce its own energy, and a hybrid cooling system, combining fans and air-conditioning, further reduces power consumption.

The hotel has two landscaped terraces, greenery on its balconies and planting along the covered walkway. The plants create delight, improve the conditions of the neighbourhood and increase the environmental performance of the building.

Client
8M Real Estate Pte Ltd
Location
21 Carpenter Street
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Status
Built
Design Inception
November 2018
Completion
December 2023
Type
Commercial, Conservation, Hospitality, Interiors, Landscape
Gross Floor Area
2748.06m²

Awards

2024

SIA Architectural Design Awards - Design of the Year

awarded by Singapore Institute of Architects

The Pano

This was the winning entry in a limited competition to masterplan 4-hectares for a mixed-use development. The site, which lies along the Chao Phraya, is to be developed in 3 phases, beginning with a luxury condominium. This comprises a 53-storey tower and low-rise apartments gathered around a lotus pond which amplifies the sense of living by the water.

The architecture explores the issue of tropicality in high-rise buildings, using devices such as sun-screens, overhangs, and ample plantings on sky gardens. Additionally, this project tackles the problematic multi-storey car-park podium—common in Bangkok where underground parking is avoided due to high construction costs—by treating it as a rocky outcropping, using it to create topography on an otherwise flat site.

Client
TCC Capital Land
Location
882 Rama 3 Road, Yanawa District
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Status
Built
Design Inception
June 2006
Completion
March 2010
Associate Architects
Tandem Architects LLC
Type
Interiors, Residential High-Rise
Gross Floor Area
110,695m²
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Wilkie Edge

This project is in Bras Basah – Bugis district, an arts, education and nightlife zone. New zoning allows media facades and advertisements, which are not allowed in the rest of the central district: the intent being to create night time buzz.

The area has a diverse mix of buildings of different eras and scales. To the north-east is a conservation area of 3 storey shophouses. Mt Sophia, to the north, is in transition from old houses and institutional buildings to dense 12 storey apartments. To the west are large podium and tower buildings from the 1980s. On the east are public housing slab blocks in bright colours. Urbanistically, we wanted to address the disjunctions in scale, and contribute to the buzz of the neighbourhood.

The brief and regulations encouraged a podium and stumpy tower, which was out of scale with the fine textured shophouses. Instead we developed a finely textured skin that filled the planning envelope, and carved out volumes that created silhouettes that are in dialogue with the scale of the buildings around them. These volumes open up light and air to the form, and allowed multiple sky gardens and terraces to be created at different levels. The carved out surfaces are aluminium sunshades and screens, which create a vertical proportion and texture relating to the historic shophouse facades. The silvery skin is a folded, perforated skin that changes with the light conditions, from silver solidity to a misty transparency.

The masterplan designated the corner as an “illuminated node”. Rather than a screen applied to the building, the media façade is integrated into the architecture. A unique LED projection system called A:Amp (Advertising Amplifier) was developed by realities:united which creates a soft light like watercolour on the façade.

Client
CapitaCommercial Trust
Location
8 Wilkie Road
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Status
Built
Design Inception
March 2005
Completion
November 2008
Type
Commercial, Hospitality, Interiors, Landscape, Mixed-Use, Offices
Gross Floor Area
29811.60m²
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Gilstead Brooks

This cluster housing project was designed in 2001, placing 28 houses on a site that previously had 2 bungalows on it. The houses are compact terrace and semi-detached houses arranged around a central landscaped pool. The site was conceived as strips that slip and slide alongside each other, allowing the terrace houses to conform to the irregular site profile. This detailing developed the concept at various scales, such as the sun shading and fenestration.

Client
Petesbury Pte Ltd
Location
39 Gilstead Road
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Status
Built
Design Inception
March 2000
Completion
December 2004
Type
Interiors, Landscape, Masterplan / Conceptual, Residential Low-Rise
Gross Floor Area
4780m²
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Lyf One-North

lyf one-north Singapore is a new co-living development located at the intersection of the commercial, educational and residential clusters of the One-North district of Singapore. The project adds an affordable, vibrant and lively co-living development to the neighbourhood, catering to young professionals working in the creative and technology companies located within this precinct. More than just an apartment building serving its own residents, the development is designed as a community hub for the neighbourhood.

It offers unique public and communal spaces for comfortable living, socializing and recreation for the co-living residents and the One-North community. lyf one-north houses 324 guestrooms and amenities across two 7-storey blocks linked by an inhabited bridge. Its central public space is an amphitheatre that can be used as a public living room for residents and visitors to commune amidst the lush greenery, or to be used for performances, pop-up activities and exhibitions.

The building uses a palette of precast concrete and landscaping which extends the existing greenery up into the development. The precast concrete façade uses variations in textures and geometry with its integrated sun-shading fins and hoods to express the playful and light-hearted character of the lyf concept. Terraced green planters along the external stairs bookend the building with a cascade of greenery. Origami-like folded walkways and roof canopies evoke paper fans and provide sun and rain protection to these areas.

Client
Ascott Residence Trust
Location
80 Nepal Park, Singapore 139409
Status
Built
Design Inception
May 2018
Completion
January 2022
Type
Commercial, Hospitality
System
Social
Gross Floor Area
6,823.2 sqmm²
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NOMU

NOMU – North of the Museum and University – is an adaptive re-use of an existing 1970s apartment block into a mixed-use development with shops, offices and residential apartments. By exposing the original concrete frame, the interplay of solid and selectively demolished voids serves to carve new, interesting volumes out of the existing structure.

The façade is wrapped in a gauze-like layer of silver screens which alternately conceal and reveal the underlying structure. Elements such as stairs and service enclosures are picked out in striking rust-red metal as functional “sculptures” that punctuate the old grid.

The project is notable for proposing that the commercial quantum be sleeved along Handy Road to enliven the street level. NOMU is an example of how obsolete inner-city structures can be utilised to make the city an exciting place to live and work.

Client
-
Location
20 Handy Road
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Status
Built
Design Inception
December 2003
Completion
March 2009
Type
Adaptive Re-Use, Commercial, Mixed-Use, Offices, Residential Mid-Rise
Gross Floor Area
5576.84m²
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Tan Quee Lan Suites

The architectural concept allows for a contrast between the old conservation shopfront façade and the rear new lightweight steel structure separated by a series of courtyards. The front traditional shop-house structure contains the commercial 1st and 2nd floors for restaurants, retail and/or office, as well as 6 loft apartments.

The rear contemporary structure, which includes 14 apartments, was designed as a solid metal box with open-able aluminium panels and overhangs. The perforated metal panels allow natural ventilation and lighting while maintaining a sense of privacy for occupants. The elevated penthouse unit has views toward the city skyline.

Client
Dawnatron Pte Ltd
Location
9 Tan Quee Lan Street, Singapore
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Status
Built
Design Inception
March 2002
Completion
December 2005
Type
Conservation, Residential Low-Rise
Gross Floor Area
3,211m²
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Odeon Towers Extension

This commercial project was designed in 2001 and involves making use of spare floor area created in an existing building by changes in area calculation methods of the planning regulations. A new low-rise showroom and retail element is constructed on an existing open space that is currently under-utilised.

A signage wall wraps the party wall of an adjoining development and creates an eye-catching entry statement that evokes memories of the Odeon cinema that used to occupy the site. A rooftop garden provides a place for product launches for the showroom and gives greenery and shade to this inner-city site.

Client
-
Location
331 North Bridge Road
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Status
Built
Design Inception
January 2002
Completion
November 2003
Type
Commercial, Interiors, Mixed-Use, Offices
Gross Floor Area
22,989m²
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Hua Guan Avenue

This house was designed in 1999 and completed in 2001. The owner collects contemporary Chinese brush paintings and appreciates works that feature strong, bold brush work.

The semi-detached house was designed as a linear stroke, a dramatic verandah overlooking a 25m pool. Architectural devices include folding, sliding, rhythm and repetition. The internal arrangement features the common party wall as a double volume gallery, lit from above by a clerestory window, and animated by reflection pools and the staircase.

Client
-
Location
Hua Guan Ave. Singapore
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Status
Built
Design Inception
March 1999
Completion
October 2001
Type
Residential Low-Rise
Gross Floor Area
577.75m²
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Maple Avenue

This house was designed to suit the lifestyle of a family with 4 daughters. It expresses the tension between privacy and openness through the alternating areas of glass and screening, and between the sensual and the rational through the use of curves and rectilinear forms.

The house is “split” by the void for circulation and staircase into front and back, and then brought together by the enfolding roof. The architectural devices used function on emotional, formal and climactic levels, such as the operable louvre screens allowing privacy, air and views to be controlled to a high degree of flexibility. Materials are treated as stretched surfaces of metal, glass and plaster that alternately enclose and reveal as they fold and overlap.

The interiors and landscape were designed together with the architecture. The interiors continue the stretched, weightless, folding and opening language of the architecture. The elliptical swimming pool raised from the rectilinear carpet of grass creates a shimmering focus to the garden, while accentuating the diagonal of the small site to create a feeling of space. Detailing throughout serves to blur the interior and exterior, such as pebbles and stepping stones used in the interior circulation and timber decks extending the interior timber floor outside to the lawn.

Client
-
Location
Maple Avenue, Singapore
Status
Built
Design Inception
March 1999
Completion
December 2001
Type
Residential Low-Rise
Gross Floor Area
570m²
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State: Built