Archisteem 17: Friendly Architecture Curation - The Sky Terrace of Singapore

kimzwarch (69)in #archisteem • 6 years ago

Today's curated project: The Sky Terrace in Singapore

As mentioned by @numpypython in my post, that there are 3 housing extraordinary housing projects. 2 of them are public housing projects but people always mistook them as private housing as the design says otherwise. Here is the last project from the 3 of them while the previously covered projects were The Skyville & The Pinnacle.

This project is led by SCDA which took place by Margaret Drive on the north and by Dawson Road on the west in Singapore. The project covered an approximate 435,000 m² with 758 units of varying unit sizes and was completed around 2015. The project is made up of 5 residential towers of 40 to 43 stories with the units designed as studio apartment style.

Similar to the previous 2 housing projects in Singapore, the project aims for the highly prestigious award to increase the property value. This project had won several international awards as well:

Highly Commended for the World Architecture Festival under Public Housing (2015)
15th SIA Architectural Design Award (2015)
Excellence Award for Skyrise Greenery Awards (2015)
Finalist of CTBUH 9th Annual Award (2015)

and some others too.

From the perspective of the architect, a public housing project should have embodied with a park, connected to the surroundings and catered for multi-generation. It is a similar approach with the other two projects that housing within a park and good connectivity. After studying these 3 projects, it is shown that these features are essential to create a holistic living environment for the people.

The innovative thinking behind Sky Terrace is to break the misconception of apartments are only meant for the adults. Kids living in the apartment are relatively risky as they may climb and play without the caution of falling over from higher floors. Thus, the architect is trying to create a safe living environment that can accommodate the young, the adult and the elderly under one roof.

Talking about the multi-generation home, the architect cleverly designed the units to be extendable. From loft units that allow 2 studio units joining into a larger duplex unit which encourages family with multi-generation to live side by side. This will allow mutual care and support among family members. Aging parents no longer need to live far away from their children and still able to live independently. On the other hand, the adults can save a lot of time on taking care their offspring and also their parents as all of them are just neighbors. Then, it is possible that the elderly that live in the apartment can also interact with each other and form a community that promotes interaction and fun to pass their time.

Although there are 5 separate apartment blocks, they are all connected with sky bridges to allow residents to cross over other buildings. Subsequently, this feature created a continuous path for the residents to jog around with a different kind of view, looking across Alexandria Canal Linear Park and also Margaret Drive. Besides this feature, the project also installed with rainwater harvesting system, dripping irrigation for plantings, water filtration for bio-retention basins, and solar energy panels. Plus, the design promoted natural ventilation and sun shading to keep the building cool without artificial air conditioning.

This summarized all 3 prestigious high rise & high dense housing projects (public and private) in Singapore. There are a few key points that the architects focused on during their design development:

Home Units Adaptivity to The Nation’s Demography – the home units are designed in a way that fits different age group and sizes of family. In a way, it creates a sustainable community that makes the place safer and vibrant.
Connectivity Between Spaces – it is crucial that spaces are linked properly in order to allow the crowd to flow from place to place. The comfortability and the ease of accessibility are two keys to design a good connection.
Home with Nature – it is obvious that people do love to live near to nature. Not only it is cooler and much relaxing, it also creates a vibrant spot for the people to hang out. The overall stress level of the community can be lower down when they have accessibility to such greenery.
Sustainable Passive Design – when we are living in high rise, it is important to pre-determine and design the building which has low maintenance fee. Thus, different consideration on designing the building form, materials usage, and technology integration to ensure the building is resilience and consume less energy.

Well, that is about it for this series. I will be looking around again for interesting buildings to curate tomorrow! Hope you enjoy and benefit from the curation.