Sky Gardens and Green Foliage Façade Bring Building in Singapore to Life

June 22, 2016 | Comments

The Oasia Downtown is a 27-story hotel in Singapore stands out among its steel and concrete neighbors thanks to its unique design, incorporating green vegetation both on the interior and exterior.

 

Vertical Garden All Along Exterior

Unlike the surrounding concrete jungle, the Oasia Downtown has an exoskeleton designed to be completely covered in green foliage.

building view

The façade of the Oasia Downtown will facilitate a large-scale vertical garden. (Image courtesy of Oasia Downtown.)

When the building opened last April, it featured 20 species of flowering vines and creeper plants, which will grow to completely cover the exoskeleton of the building over the next 12 months. The plants are strategically placed to minimize the need for gardening maintenance. When it comes to a 27-story building, it is ideal to limit the need for “flying gardeners” as they present a potential safety issue.

 

Sky Gardens in the Interior

The building’s green exterior complements the sky gardens that are built in alternating layers within the tower, each 30 m tall.

Each sky garden is sheltered by the preceding sky garden above, but find exposure to sunlight through the sides, where visitors can also enjoy the cross-ventilation.

Large scale, high-volume, low-speed fans are also incorporated into the building design as kinetic sculptures to ensure thermal comfort. This ventilation strategy effectively eliminates the need for air conditioning.

sky garden

The sky garden has extensive open corridors to facilitate ventilation. (Image courtesy of StayFarEast.)

 

Taking Green Architecture Literally

The Oasia Downtown prides itself on having a green plot ratio of 750 percent. This index is a measurement of the total area of single-sided leaves within the planted landscape to the area of the plot of land.

The intense incorporation of greenery in the building is likely a breath of fresh air for residents of Singapore’s heavily urbanized downtown hub.

“We wanted to bring biodiversity back and compensate for the hardness of the city. That will make [the hotel] more livable and more than just a building,” said Architect Wong Mun Summ, co-founder of WOHA.

For more information on the project, see the WOHA website.

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