Büro Ole Scheeren' DUO Twin Towers project has been awarded CTBUH's 2021 Urban Habitat Award, which acknowledges the design's significant contribution to its urban context. Completed in 2018, the project restructures a previously disjointed and neglected part of Singapore, creating a dynamic place that enables social interaction. The award confirms the studio's socially and environmentally responsible approach to design. New footage by photographer Iwan Baan captures the DUO's silhouette and elevated landscape, hinting at the project's careful consideration of its urban and civic context.
One of Singapore's recent landmarks, DUO, comprises two cultural towers: a residential building and one containing a hotel and office spaces. The project's spatial configuration shapes a coherent urban framework together with the neighbouring buildings while also creating a permeable site that merges green spaces with a diverse social activity. A series of elevated public spaces, communal terraces and a publicly accessible roofscape and viewing deck further expand the city's public realm. DUO accomplishes a 100% landscape offset, creating new green space equivalent to the sites unbuilt area and the buildings concave shapes channel wind flow to the site, fostering a cool microclimate.
The core vision of DUO was to create a new sense of urban habitat in which humans, architecture and nature can coexist in productive and socially responsible ways. The project repairs a broken piece of the city and celebrates public life as the central quality of a socially responsible urban environment - Ole Scheeren.
Büro Ole Scheeren has previously received the CTBUH Urban Habitat Award in 2014 for The Interlace in Singapore, as well as the Best Tall Building Award in 2013 for the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing. With a strong focus on social interaction and inclusive environments, the studio's body of work includes MahaNakhon Tower in Bangkok, a mixed-use high-rise development that reimagines the skyscraper typology, the Guardian Art Center in Beijing. Together with Shigeru Ban, the practice has recently been assigned the Hangzhou Wangjiang New Town master plan, which will create new art and cultural destination in the historical city.
