Review by Mr. Patrick
Bingham-Hall, Publisher / Photographer
Singapore-based WOHA Architects have long
been advocates of the ultimate ‘green city’ – one that would be comprised of
more vegetation than if it were left as wilderness – and the PARKROYAL on
Pickering was designed as a hotel-as-garden that would double the green-growing
potential of its site. Adorned by frangipani and palm trees and draped with
tropical plants, curvaceous sky-gardens are cantilevered at every fourth level
between the blocks of guest rooms. Greenery flourishes throughout the entire
complex, and the trees and gardens of the hotel appears to merge with those of
the adjoining park as one continuous sweep of urban parkland.
The PARKROYAL on Pickering occupies a long
and narrow site on the western edge of the central business district, between
Hong Lim Park and the HDB apartment blocks of Chinatown, and overlooks the
historic shophouse district between the park and the Singapore River. The
development could thus respond to many varied environments, it could provide
public connections between those zones, and as the building would be extremely
visible, the architects could make a grand (and green) urban gesture.
A twelve-storey tower above a five-storey
podium is placed on an E plan, so that all guest rooms look north to the park
and/or into the sky gardens, whilst the services and the external connecting
corridors were placed on the southern elevation. As the hotel is ‘self-shaded’
– by the projecting sky gardens and the adjacency of the three room-blocks –
and shielded from early morning and afternoon sun by adjoining buildings, the
rooms could be fully glazed (by low-emissivity glass) without external
screening devices.
The podium represents a monumental
embellishment to the Singapore streetscape, and has thus immediately achieved
something that no other recent building has even attempted in the city.
Referred to by WOHA as ‘topographical architecture’, stratified layers of
pre-cast concrete weave through a modular grid of cylindrical columns without
interruption, and without acknowledgment of the boundaries between exterior and
interior. Cascades flow down from swimming pools and garden terraces on the
podium roof, over the ‘eroded rock-forms’ of the striated mass, and into
crevices and ledges from which trees and vines can thrive.
The PARKROYAL on Pickering is a very public
and very Singaporean hotel. The architecture responds specifically to the
intricacies of the city – the height of the ubiquitous tree canopies, the size
and orientation of the adjoining tower blocks, and the proportions of the
historic streetscapes – and retains a human scale at all times, in stark
contrast to the generic abstraction of the surrounding office buildings.
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