A RIVER OF CONCRETE, THE STAIRS DRAW YOU UP TO THE GLAZED AREAS OVERHANGING THE WOODED RIVERSIDE

摘要

Hotel and resortdesign is generally looked down upon by an architectural fraternity that regards its tropes as superficial and its purpose as frivolous. But Singapore-based practice WOHA pursues an honourable tradition of climatically appropriate, tropical resort architecture. And in part, its approach amplifies the low-rise, low-density work of architects such as Sri Lankan Geoffrey Bawa or Australian Peter Muller in the 1970s. The co-founding directors of WOHA, Richard Hassell (himself Australian) and Wong Mun Summ met while working on hotels in Kerry Hill's Singapore office. Their skill has been to successfully adapt these antecedents into high-density urban projects. In their most recently completed work, a $100 million (£60 million) School of the Arts (SOTA), the practice explores such themes in a public building for the visual and performing arts in the heart of Singapore.