Oasia Hotel Downtown, Singapore

[Image © Patrick Bingham-Hall]

In December 2016, a new verdant tower of green was completed in Singapore's financial centre.

Oasia Hotel Downtown was designed by WOHA Architects and has been used as a prototype of land use intensification for the urban tropics; presenting an alternative to the sleek skyscrapers of the west.

[Image © K. Kopter]

WOHA created a series of different strata, each with its own sky garden, allowing for recreational and social areas throughout the high-rise. Each sky garden is sheltered at high level by the one preceding it, with open sides for formal and visual transparency, and to allow cross-ventilation.

[Image © K. Kopter]

Landscaping forms a major part of the tower's aesthetic, used extensively as an architectural surface treatment.

It achieves a Green Plot Ratio of 1,100%, and the aim is for it to become a 'haven for birds and animals', thereby encouraging the return of biodiversity into the dense urban space.

[Image © K. Kopter]

[Image © Patrick Bingham-Hall]

The building incorporates 21 different species of creepers, with colourful flowers and greenery forming a kind of mosaic on the red aluminium mesh cladding. Instead of a flat roof, the skyscraper is topped with a tropical circular bower.

[Image © Patrick Bingham-Hall]

Images and content courtesy of WOHA Architects.

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