Singapore Stunning Garden Hotel Opens

As far as the team at WOHA is concerned, green cities are the future. Their latest project, Singapore's Park Royal Hotel, is evidence of how it's done. As a result of the building's construction, the site's capacity for natural growth has doubled.

Comprised of twelve storeys that overlook Singapore's CBD, the Park Royal is not just a hotel, it's an oasis - not merely another building, but a kind of extension of the adjacent park. Elevated gardens, filled with palm trees, frangipanis and rambling tropical flora, extend from every fourth level.

Inside, the green theme continues, with plants and water features forming an inherent part of the interior design. On the top floor, the Hotel's club lounge offers panoramic views, and on the fifth, the spa area features an expansive pool and a 300-metre long botanic 'strip'. All rooms are northward facing, looking over the elevated gardens and/or the park. Energy efficiency is prioritised throughout, with maximised natural lighting, self-shading, harvesting of rainwater, thorough recycling systems and motion-stimulated sensors.

Where much of Singapore's architecture tends towards the insipid, faceless and generic, WOHA's bold, environmentally aware design represents a mighty gesture. In the view of architectural photographer and writer, Patrick Bingham-Hall, '...finally the city has a uniquely expressive landmark that reinterprets and reinvigorates its location...The Park Royal on Pickering is a purely commercial development...But as with many of WOHA's projects built throughout Asia over the last decade, the hotel performs unambiguously as a public building...proposing that commercial architecture must respond to the city as its civic duty.'

Previously, WOHA has won three Green Good Design Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum and the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies - for the Sanya Intercontinental Hotel, China; the Hansar Rajdamri, Bangkok, Thailand; and the Wilkie Edge, Singapore.

[Via Inhabitat]