WOHA was founded by Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell in 1994. The Singapore-based practice focuses on conceiving integrated architectural and urban solutions to tackle the problems of the 21st century such as climate change, population growth and rapidly increasing urbanisation.
WOHA works at all scales, from interiors and architecture to public spaces and regenerative master plans and integrates their systems thinking approach into each project. Their buildings are prototypes that are made up of interconnected human-scaled environments which foster community, facilitate stewardship of nature, generate biophilic beauty, activate ecosystem services and build resilience.
Their book “Garden City Mega City” lays out fundamental strategies and principles for creating high-density urban environments that are also high-amenity and provide a better quality of life with environments that are vibrant, engaging and planned for long-term growth and sustainability. Their innovative rating system to measure the performance of buildings has garnered interest internationally and is being adopted into construction policies in several cities.
WOHA has received a number of architectural awards such as the Aga Khan Award for One Moulmein Rise as well as the RIBA Lubetkin Prize and International Highrise Award for The Met. The practice won the 2019 CTBUH 2019 Urban Habitat and Best Mixed-Use Building and 2018 World Architecture Festival World Building of the Year for Kampung Admiralty and 2018 CTBUH Best Tall Building Worldwide for the Oasia Hotel Downtown.
The practice currently has projects under construction in Singapore, Australia, China and other countries in South Asia.
A travelling exhibition devoted exclusively to their work opened at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Germany, in December 2011, and four monographs have been published on WOHA’s projects to date. “Garden City Mega City”, a summation of their template for rethinking architecture and cities for the 21st century was published in 2016.
WOHA’s “Garden City Mega City” exhibition opened at The Skyscraper Museum in New York in March – September 2016 and thereafter in Mexico for the Mextropoli Festival from March – April 2017. The exhibition returned to the United States in February – April 2018 where it was on show at the Austin Central Library in Texas.