MeyerHouse

Along Meyer Road, in Singapore’s eastern residential enclaves, sits a condominium development housing 56 dwelling units adjacent to a 1 hectare forested park. The 5-storey with attic development is arrayed in a contiguous ‘C’ configuration with residences looking out onto a 50m by 75m internal forested garden that spills out onto the adjacent park.

Living spaces extend onto large outdoor rooms nestled amongst tall forest trees set amidst a formal English garden. Terracing gardens and water bodies cascade down onto a lower ground arrival level, opening up the subterranean arrival lobbies and facilities to natural daylight, ventilation and greenery.

From street level, the building is scaled to the proportions of a traditional French Chateau with a stately façade of customized louvers and panelling that envelops the entire form. The louvered façade is inclined to secure privacy for units from street level. The façade finishes extend onto the roof, creating an envelope that is sculptural and abstract.

Internally, the forested garden is cocooned by timber blinds that screen the residences imbuing the tranquil garden spaces with warmth and character. Within the garden, a long pool set centrally along the main axial views of the forested park reflect the tall trees and warm facades of the development. The pool is overlooked by guest and entertainment facilities that house a generous dining room, a cosy lounge and outdoor activity decks.

2023

  • Green Good Design Sustainability Awards - Winner

    Awarded by Chicago Atheneum in the Green Architecture category.

Alila Villas Bintan

The brief was conceived as an art-hobby resort-cum-weekend home located along the northern coast of Bintan island to reconnect urbanites with nature. A sensitive design approach of “camouflaged architecture” has been adopted, one where building is overtaken by landscaping, enabling flora and fauna to coexist with human habitation.

Comprising 12 beachfront residences and 52 hotel villas, the public area of the resort is designed to function like a public square, with its landmark roof structure acting like an orientating devise, analogous to that of a town hall’s clock tower. The art palette comprises of a community village at the forest ridge that crowns the development like a tropical acropolis. Accessible to the public, the art palette features a museum, art gallery, spa, boutiques and fine dining establishments that promote wholesome food harvested from the resort’s very own organic farm and orchard.

The project champions sustainable efforts on various levels. Physically, the development touches the ground lightly by following the natural slope of the site with minimal cut-and-fill construction; guest rooms are orientated to act as wind funnels for sea breezes, minimising the need for air-conditioning and all lower terraces serve as green roofs/gardens. As many trees as possible are conserved, with lightweight construction vehicles and human labour deployed wherever feasible. Only natural swimming pools and natural springs in which biological filters and hydroponic plants clarify and purify the water are designed in keeping with the surrounding lushly landscaped setting.

Pan Pacific Orchard

The design of Pan Pacific Orchard envisions a new prototype for high-rise tropical hospitality. This 23-storey 350-room building will become a distinctive garden hotel, adding to the green and spectacle along Singapore’s Orchard Road shopping belt.

To overcome the limited site area and to break down the scale, the design stacks 4 distinct strata with 3 Sky Terraces inserted as elevated grounds with amenities surrounded by gardens. The guest rooms are split into 3 stacks configured in L-shaped stacks overlooking either the Sky Terraces or city.

The 1st strata is designed as a Forest Terrace set between Claymore Road and Claymore Drive with a water plaza and cascades and edged by forest trees, creating a dramatic entrance and a memorable urban connection.

The 2nd strata is conceived as a Beach Terrace, offering guests a tropical oasis, with meandering sandy beachfront and palm groves around an emerald lagoon, set against Orchard Road.

The 3rd strata is set up as a Garden Terrace orientated towards the quiet residential estate of Claymore Hill. Flanked by the Bar and Lounge, the Terrace showcases a manicured garden, complete with verandah, lawn, fountains and garden.

The 4th strata is envisaged as a Cloud Terrace comprising of a 400 seat ballroom and event lawn, surrounded by thin mirror pools and filigree planting, washed by natural light filtering through the PV roof canopy.

The interiors are designed to reinforce the experience of each strata, offering a unique boutique-scale hotel experience. Huge living green columns with creepers visually connects the 4 stratas, juxtaposing against the stacked massing and lend the urban hotel with a touch of resort.

Crowne Plaza Changi Airport

Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel, at Terminal 3, Singapore, is designed to create a sensual “time-out” for the exhausted traveller – a quick shot of the steamy tropics, a taste of Singapore, new Asia, 24 hours a day.

Designed in 2006, the building “floats” on a delicate filigree floral cage that filters and softens the surroundings, filled with tropical vegetation. The guest rooms drift on a carpet of jungle, water, palms, suspended over the tangle of roads. Beneath the carpet the travellers are collected from the departure level, arrival hall and entrance road by sensuously flowing walls, and then gently guided towards service and hospitality spaces wrestled from the left over spaces between the roads.

The architecture and interior expression is derived from South-East Asian textiles and tropical jungle. The façade is a 3-dimensional batik fabric that provides 60% shading to the facade. The public areas are wrapped in flowing bands of timber veneer, glazed Thai tiles, Indonesian Batik and Chinese metal mesh. The ballroom is an abstracted forest under a ceiling of raintree canopies in perforated metal. Materials are intentionally rough, sensuous and intense, contrasting in colour, texture and solidity to counteract the blandness of commercial aviation environment.

2009

  • 3rd LIAS Awards for Excellence - Silver Winner

    Awarded by Landscape Industry Association (Singapore)

  • ULI Awards for Excellence: Asia Pacific - Winner

    Awarded by Urban Land Institute

  • Design & Engineering Safety Excellence Awards 2009 - Merit Award

    Commercial Category awarded by Building and Construction Authority

2008

  • Development of the Year 2008 - Winner

    Awarded by Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific (HICAP)

  • World's Best Airport Hotels 2008 - Finalist

    Awarded by ForbesTraveler.com

29 HongKong Street

WOHA’s own office in Singapore is housed in a converted shophouse near to the river.

Two adjacent units of the traditional building typology were merged into one to house the office’s growing needs for space. Apart from the more traditional office elements like studios and meeting rooms, 29 HongKong Street also accommodates a gallery (WOHAGA), extensive roof terraces and a fully equipped kitchen and lounge.

While the front facade is protected by conservation guidelines, the more recent extension in the rear allowed more substantial changes. The top floor, previously cramped under a pitch roof, was converted into double-storey loft like space.

The traditional element of the shophouse courtyard was maintained for visual connection between the studios as well as cross ventilation. It also acts as an experimental ground for ongoing research and development of green wall systems.

In the extensive fit-out works on the building’s interior, furniture designs from the old office were developed further, transporting aspects of the familiar environment and its atmosphere to the new location.

三亚半山半岛洲际度假酒店

The Intercontinental Sanya Resort is in Sanya, Hainan, China’s tropical island and comprises of a hotel with 350 rooms and related facilities. The hotel stretches from a busy entertainment spine to the natural forest of the rocky point.

One third of the rooms are located in a 10-storey curved linear block that frames the arrival space. Two thirds of the rooms are located in huge water courtyards, and are more resort-like in feel. These rooms are an innovative hybrid of detached villas and room blocks. Each room has a private open air garden bathroom, and a detached cabana that is reached via a bridge or garden. The cabanas sit within the huge watergardens, each a hectare in size.

The design combines masterplanning, landscape, architecture and interiors to set up a series of views and vistas to the sea, framed by coconut trees, reflected in water, and then reframed again with stone, timber and fabric, ensuring every room has a special view. The design of the various public areas varies from urban and formal to casual and beachy, allowing the hotel to address many different markets and customers.

The entire resort is designed as a patchwork of inhabited gardens, giving a foreground  to the views of the owner’s highrise apartments behind. The design is inspired by Chinese screens, palaces and compounds, interpreted in a contemporary fashion. The huge precast concrete screen is an aperiodic mathematical tiling.

The hotel is designed to sustainable principles. Passive energy saving design (large overhangs, natural light, cross-ventilation, shaded courtyards, and planted roofs), use of indigenous seasonal landscape and water conservation and recycling are some of the strategies used.

Singapore Institute of Technology

The SIT-Plot 1 campus is uniquely endowed with an existing secondary forest. The design capitalises on this green site asset by integrating its learning environments with biophilic indoor-outdoor tropical spaces. To forge an imageable “Campus-in-a-Park” identity, the academic blocks are organised as a chain of buildings encompassing the central forest courtyard that is transformed into an accessible Community Park. This serves as the heart of SIT, contributing to a strong sense of place that is characterised by memorable nodes for interaction, recreation and rejuvenation.

The design leverages on the site’s undulating terrain by creating two public ground levels that segregate vehicles from pedestrians, creating a people-friendly, car-lite campus. These fenceless, 24/7 publicly accessible ground levels are interconnected across the Punggol Digital District, linking shared carparks and a series of key public spaces.

SIT’s primary signature library building is strategically located at the prime intersection between New Punggol Road and the pedestrianised Campus Boulevard as a prominent urban landmark.

On the rooftops, photovoltaic panels are arrayed as a banner of sustainability over the entire campus. These serve as a key renewable energy source that powers SIT’s Multi-Energy Micro Grid located within Plot 1. Productivity features include precast facades and structural systems for the academic blocks and structural steel for the long span bridges.

Enabling Village

The Enabling Village is a demonstration of heartland rejuvenation through adaptive reuse of the old Bukit Merah Vocational Institute / Employment & Employability Institute (e2i) in Redhill. The site was previously fenced-in, inward-looking and did not contribute to the neighbourhood. The Masterplan conceives the Village as a new community heart and opens up the space as a park to connect people with disabilities, residents and public.

The design removes all physical barriers, extends linkages and creates a variety of shared spaces, gardens and amenities, breathing life between and within buildings. A simple robust palette of finishes and motifs was adopted as a kit-of-parts system to stitch together surfaces and spaces of the new and existing.

The porous and accessible nature of the Enabling Village creates an inclusive environment, integrating people with disabilities as equal in the community.

2019

  • ArcAsia Awards for Architecture - Mention

    Category D (Conservation Projects) category, awarded by Architects Regional Council Asia (ARCASIA)

2017

  • 2017 Design for Asia Award - Grand Award with Special Mention

    Awarded by Hong Kong Design Centre

2016

  • President's Design Award - Design of the Year

    Awarded by DesignSingapore Council and Urban Redevelopment Authority

  • 16th SIA Architectural Design Awards 2016 - Design Award

    Special Categories, awarded by the Singapore Institute of Architects

  • BCA Universal Design Award - Winner (Platinum)

    Awarded by Building and Construction Authority, Singapore

凯德天府

地处中国西南部的四川省省会成都市正处在一个崛起的阶段,这里不仅拥有秀丽的山水和肥沃的平,也同时积载了丰厚的历史和文化底蕴,如今这座古老的城市正以飞快的速度发展成为一个现代化的大都市和金融中心。凯德天府商城正是坐落在这样一片复苏地域的西面,新南天地商圈的核心地带之中。这座拥有着一幢办公大楼,三栋公寓楼和一个八层楼高大型商场的一站式城市综合体紧邻着连接成都新行政中心和老城区的南北向交通枢纽天府大道,得天独厚的选址使得人们在经过此处的天府高架立交桥时能清楚的一览项目的全貌。商城无论是在白天还是在夜晚都是一处引入注目的地标建筑,彰显着自己独特的风采并吸引着南来北往的顾客。

商城的设计灵感来源于成都当地著名景点青城山独特的地理风貌,借喻于那里的山石将建筑与自然有机的结合了起来。整个建筑的造型犹如一簇巨石,经过开凿打磨后展露里面的水晶块面,像是从周围城市基础设施和混凝土大楼的灰暗基调里拔地而起的一攒光彩夺目的珠宝。而石块与石块之间的“岩缝”则成为了一条条有着茂密植被和错落水景的“山涧峡谷”。这样有趣的自然造型和景观以空中花园的形式一直垂直延续至了商城顶部的办公和公寓塔楼内,在为商城周围其他商业群落提供丰富景致的同时更为物业内的顾客,居民和办公人员带来了享受自然的体验。

花园绿化的主题也被带入了商场的内部设计里,特别是在位于商场四层的溜冰场四周,多种多样的室内植栽形成了一座茂密的温室花园让人们在购物的同时也能亲近和了解自然植物。溜冰场的上方则采用了有着枝叶纹理的穿孔铝板作为天花板,天花内部的灯光经铝板过滤后柔和的撒下来,让人感觉仿佛置身于一大片热带雨林内。此外,溜冰场底部的天花则是一块大型的电子显示屏,模拟着不断变化的天空。

凯德天府的建筑外表皮被赋予了独特而丰富的色彩和纹理,让建筑不至于在成都较为阴沉的气候环境里显得平乏无趣。设计通过铝制饰材,金属穿孔板和玻璃等轻快材料之间的几何组合制造出了对比强烈,丰富多彩的强有力建筑语言。底部群楼立面上犹如被抛光打磨过的块面变成了悬挂节庆横幅,展示品牌商标和零售商品的绝佳界面,而上方办公和居住塔楼上比例讲究的玻璃幕墙则映照着这片天府之国的风云变化。作为整个建筑的主要立面材料之一,经过特别设计的铝制穿孔板不仅是一种对传统中国隔栅的抽象演艺,也在功能上起到了提供隐私和过滤自然光的作用。嵌在这些铝板后的特制灯光会在晚上为商场换上又一层靓丽外衣,如同布满夜空的繁星一般。

这样一个大型的综合体项目就像是成都这座城市的缩影,将天府之国的活力浓缩进了自己的一方天地里。商城的定位旨在迎合社会的文化倾向,为人们提供一个有咖啡厅和公园的独特城市体验和新鲜的生活方式。为了更好的和顾客互动,群楼商场的屋顶部分被设计成了一系列拥有众多景观平台,花园和休闲空间的商业广场,为家庭,青少年,中老年和上班族等不同人群提供了观景,交流,用餐,溜冰以及参加各种活动的极佳场所。这样一个屋顶商业广场也是下方商场内各种商业活动的延伸,为顾客提供了更加全面和连续的购物娱乐体验。

BRAC University

该项目位于孟加拉国的首都达卡,旨在将把一个被污染的并且经常被淹没的荒地改造成一个可持续的位于市中心的校园和公园。该项目的灵感来自该地区附近的孙德尔本斯国家公园,那里的生态系统十分独特的以潮汐线为界,潮位以上和潮位以下的生态系统相互独立。

该项目中的设计和功能分为了两个部分,相对私密的拔地而起的教学楼和位于地面的公共的校园园林景观,这个园林是将现有的受污染的沼泽改造成一个本土植被茂盛的生物滞留池。事实上,这个校园将容纳一万多名学生,其教学建筑也将为校园景观遮风避雨。

此外,公共区域还包括了一些聚集空间,例如大学礼堂、多功能厅和公共画廊。建筑的屋顶还将作为大学的绿地,其中将容纳一个休闲场地、一个游泳池和一条在大型太阳能顶棚的遮蔽下的长200米的跑道。通过灵活的结构模型,这里的空间可以被组合或细分,这是为了适应未来对设施需求上的调整。

设计中融入了新的建筑和环境策略,将创建完全不需要空调的位于热带的学习空间,而一系列的遮阳板和垂直绿色墙壁解决了对热能的获取过剩的问题。绿色立面起到了环境过滤器的作用,减少了眩光和灰尘,帮助保持室内凉爽,降低来自于交通的噪音。开放且通风的平面设计有助于在每个教室中进行交叉通风并保证了房间内的采光。

2017

  • LafargeHolcim Awards Asia Pacific - Bronze Winner

    Awarded by LafargeHolcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction