Designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, CapitaSpring is Singapore’s latest addition to its skyline. Recently completed after four years of construction, the 280-meter-tall high-rise oasis, considered among the city’s tallest structures, is a mixed-use high-rise with abundant sky gardens and rooftop park, office space, a serviced residence, a hawker center, restaurants, and public spaces.
The biophilic skyscraper, aligned with “the city’s pioneering vertical urbanism” and Singapore’s reputation as a garden city, is located at the heart of the financial district on the site of a former public car park and a hawker center. Comprising 80,000 plants, translating to a total landscaped area of more than 140% of its site area, the tower puts in place a “new green breathing space in the high-density CBD for the neighboring tenants and passersby”.
When we first got invited to join the architectural competition, we saw a great opportunity to team up and join forces with BIG to achieve a uniquely bold result together. It has been enriching to combine our approach with design and innovation with BIG's skill in architectural scale. As CapitaSpring is open to the public today, I am proud of how we enhanced the public spaces across the building, creating the best experience for all users, leveraging both technology and unprecedented integration with natural elements. -- Carlo Ratti, Founding Partner, CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Director, MIT Senseable City Lab.
Collaborating on the architecture, public space, and digital user experience, BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, and CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati imagined a 93,000-square-meter mixed-use high-rise that opens up at multiple elevations to reveal glimpses into the green oases blooming from the base, core, and rooftop “sky garden.” Restoring part of the historically significant Market Street to the public realm, at the building’s second and third floors with 56 food stalls, CapitaSpring includes serviced residences on the first eight floors, and office spaces on the top 29 floors.
Accredited with Green Mark Platinum & Universal Design GoldPLUS certifications by the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore, CapitaSpring has four connected levels of the open-air garden, at the core of the building, weaving nature seamlessly into the architecture. In fact, the vertical soft scape of the Green Oasis mimics the plant hierarchy of tropical rainforests, shade-tolerant plants with large leaves are found on the “rainforest floor,” requiring the least amount of direct light, while on the “roof” of the rainforest, trees are defined by their smaller leaf structure. Moreover, the tower’s rooftop garden is home to Singapore’s tallest urban farm, with over 150 species of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers grown.
Our design seeks to continue Singapore's pioneering vertical urbanism with the 280m tall diverse neighborhood of places to work, live and play inside as well as outside. Due to the unique character of Singapore’s urbanism – both extremely dense and green - we decided to make the design a vertical exploration of tropical urbanism. At grade, the street is closed to form a new linear park and public plaza. A vertical park in the middle of the tower forms a spiraling promenade ascending among tropical tree trunks and canopies. On top, an urban forest feeds all the restaurants and cafes in the building and allows visitors to enjoy the lushness of the summit. Capitaspring is like a vision of a future in which city and countryside, culture and nature can coexist, and urban landscapes can expand unrestricted into the vertical dimension. -- Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner, BIG.
CapitaSpring
- SIZE: 93,000 square meters
- LOCATION: Singapore
- CLIENT: CapitaLand Development, CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust and Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd.
- COLLABORATORS: RSP Architects Planners & Engineers (Pte) Ltd, ARUP Singapore Pte Ltd , Beca Carter Hollings & Ferner (S.E.Asia) Pte Ltd, Arcadis Singapore Pte Ltd, COEN Design International Pte Ltd, Takenouchi Webb Pte Ltd, Nipek Pte Ltd, Asylum Creative Ptd Ltd, Jacobs International Consultants Pte Ltd, Ignesis Consultants Pte Ltd, PH Consulting Pte Ltd, TSM Consultancy Pte Ltd, Dragages Singapore Pte Ltd, Meinhardt Singapore Pte Ltd, Squire Mech Pte Ltd.
CRA-CARLO RATTI ASSOCIATI TEAM
- Carlo Ratti, Monika Löve, Antonio Atripaldi, Gary di Silvio, Gianluca Zimbardi, Saverio Panata, Alberto Bottero, Chiara de Grandi, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Andrea Giordano, Damiano Gui, Mariachiara Mondini, Andrea Pedrina, Andrea Riva
- CONSULTANTS: dotdotdot – Alessandro Masserdotti, Fabrizio Pignoloni, Gabriele Gambotto
BIG TEAM
- Partners-in-charge: Bjarke Ingels, Brian Yang
- Project Leader: Gorka Calzada Medina, Martino Hutz, Song He
- Project Manager: Eric Li, Günther Weber
- BIG Sustainability: Tore Banke, Anders Holden Deleuran
- BIG Landscape: Dina Brændstrup, Kirsty Badenoch, Ulla Hornsyld
- Team: Aime Desert, Aleksander Wadas, Aleksandra Domian, Alessandro Zanini, Anke Kristina Schramm, Augusto Lavieri Zamperlini, Dalma Ujvari, David Schwarzman, David Vega y Rojo, Davide Tarditi, Dimitrie Grigorescu, Dominika Trybe, Elise Cauchard, Eriko Maekawa, Espen Vik, Ewa Szajda, Federica Locati, Filippo Lorenzi, Francisco Castellanos, Frederik Skou Jensen, Gabrielé Ubareviciute, Guoyu Liu, Helen Chen, Jacek Baczkowski, Jakub Wlodarczyk, Jonas Käckenmester, Julieta Muzzillo, Luca Pileri, Luis Torsten Wagenführer, Lukas Kerner, Malgorzata Mutkowska, Maria Teresa Fernandez Rojo, Matilde Tavanti, Moa Carlsson, Nataly Timotheou, Niu Jing, Orges Guga, Patrycja Lyszczyk, Pedro Savio jobim Pinheiro, Philip Rufus Knauf, Praewa Samachai, Qamelliah Nassir, Rahul Girish, Ramon Julio Muros Cortes, Rebecca Carrai, Roberto Fabbri, Samuel Rubio Sanchez, Shuhei Kamiya, Sofiia Rokmaniko, Sorcha Burke, Steen Kortbæk Svendsen, Szymon Kolecki, Teodor Fratila Cristian, Viktoria Millentrup, Vilius Linge, Vinish Sethi, Weijia Lu, Xin Su, Xinying Zhang, Zari van de Merwe, Zhen Tong
