Marina Bay Sands, a $5 billion, high-density, mixed-use integrated resort that brings together a 2,560-room hotel, convention center, shopping and dining, theaters, museum, and a casino across the water from Singapore’s Central Business District, opened to the public on June 23, 2010. Designed by Boston-based, internationally renowned architect Moshe Safdie for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, the 929,000 square meter (10 million square-foot) urban district anchors the Singapore waterfront, creates a gateway to Singapore, and provides a dynamic setting for a vibrant public life. Moshe Safdie was invited to join the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in developing a competitive design proposal for Marina Bay for submission to the Government of Singapore.

“Marina Bay Sands is really more than a building project, it is a microcosm of a city rooted in Singapore’s culture, climate, and contemporary life,” says architect Moshe Safdie. “Our challenge was to create a vital public place at the district-urban scale, in other words, to address the issue of megascale and invent an urban landscape that would work at the human scale.”

Safdie designed an urban structure that weaves together the components of a complex program into a dynamic urban crossroads and public meeting place. Inspired by great ancient cities that were ordered around a vital public thoroughfare, Marina Bay Sands is organized around two principal axes that traverse the district and give it a sense of orientation placing emphasis on the pedestrian street as the focus of civic life. This new urban place integrates the waterfront promenade, a 74,000 square meter (800,000 square-foot) multi-level retail arcade, and the iconic Museum of ArtScience on the promontory. Located along the network of public paths are also two theaters with a combined 4,000 seats, a casino, a 9,000 square meter (96,000 square-foot) convention and exhibition center, and a hydraulically adjustable public event piazza of 5,000 square meters (54,000 square feet). Combining indoor and outdoor spaces and providing a platform for a wide array of activities, this vibrant, 21^st-century cardo maximus,or grand arcade, also connects to the subway and other transportation.

Layered Parks

A series of layered gardens provide ample green space throughout Marina Bay Sands, extending the tropical garden landscape from Marina City Park towards the Bayfront. The landscape network reinforces urban connections with the resort’s surroundings and every level of the district has green space that is accessible to the public. Generous pedestrian streets open to tropical plantings and water views. Half of the roofs of the hotel, convention center, shopping mall, and casino complex are planted with trees and gardens.

The three 55-storey hotel towers anchor the district and are connected at the top by the 1 hectare (2.5-acre) SkyPark. An engineering marvel 200 meters (656 feet) above the sea, the SkyPark spans from tower to tower and cantilevers 65 meters (213 feet) beyond. It accommodates a public observatory, gardens, a 151 meter-long (495 foot-long) swimming pool, restaurants, and jogging paths and offers sweeping panoramic views, a formidable resource in a dense city like Singapore. Shielded from the winds and lavishly planted with hundreds of trees, the SkyPark celebrates the notion of the Garden City that has been the underpinning of Singapore’s urban design strategy.

Large-Scale Public Art

Moshe Safdie selected five international artists to create eight monumental public art installations for Marina Bay Sands (James Carpenter, Antony Gormley, Ned Kahn, Sol LeWitt, and Chongbin Zheng). The artists worked closely with Safdie to ensure that the site-specific commissions complement the architecture and energize the public spaces.

“Singapore’s public art incentive program offers an extraordinary opportunity for commissioned works in which art and architecture are complementary and seamlessly integrated,” said Mr. Safdie. “It has been a privilege to collaborate with the artists to achieve installations which enrich the environment and inspire the public. Each of the works resonates in a particular way with the architecture while presenting the artists with an extraordinary palette of their creations.”

About Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie is a leading architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. Embracing a comprehensive and humane design philosophy, Safdie has been a visionary force in architecture and urban planning for over forty years. Safdie is committed to architecture that supports and enhances a project’s program; that is informed by the geographic, social, and cultural elements that define a place; and that responds to human needs and aspirations. Completing a wide range of projects, such as cultural, educational, and civic institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; mixed-use urban centers and airports; and master plans for existing communities and entirely new cities, Safdie has made lasting contributions to the quality of life in cities and neighborhoods around the world.

        

The PANTONE HOTEL will awaken guests’ senses to an array of colorful delights and playful surprises. Designed by Belgian interior designer Michel Penneman and Belgian architect Olivier Hannaert, each of the hotel’s seven floors are enlightened by different color palettes to complement guests’ emotions with distinctive hues – whether vivid or subdued.

Through a licensing partnership with British developers, the PANTONE HOTEL is part of PANTONE UNIVERSE^®, an expanding line of colorful, design-inspired products for consumers. From PANTONE Chip inspired mugs created by W2 to Sonia Spencer cufflinks and Alpa stationary and bags, the hotel offers the largest selection of PANTONE UNIVERSE products worldwide, all available for purchase at the hotel.

“Paris has the Champs Elysées, Barcelona has the Ramblas and New York City has Fifth Avenue,” said Lisa Herbert, Executive Vice President at Pantone. “On Avenue Louise, international labels commingle with Belgian goods of all kinds against a backdrop of elegant mansions and modern business towers, all bordered by chestnut trees. Pantone is right at home in the heart of this vibrant city center, having long been synonymous with color and design in all walks of life, from high fashion and interior design to corporate branding.”

The guest rooms are works of art – white walls and bedding provide a clean, crisp canvas for saturated pops of vibrant color. Adding to the artistry, rooms feature photographic installations created by renowned Belgian photographer Victor Levy that include a spectrum of vibrant PANTONE Colors to create a unique ambiance in each room. The 59 affordably priced rooms and suites empower guests to transform their travels by selecting a room that complements their mood through color. The rooms and suites are patterned after one of seven distinct PANTONE Color palettes and include inviting bedding, LCD TVs and central air conditioning; many also offer unparalleled views of Brussels.

PANTONE Color consultants are also available by appointment for informal color consultations or to present educational seminars on color psychology and trends.

Rooms and packages can be booked by visiting www.pantonehotel.com.

        

2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize recipients, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA unveil their latest and greatest project, the Rolex Learning Center in Switzerland.The Rolex Learning Center is above all a library and learning space devoted to the cultivation of knowledge by an array of different methods. It has one of the largest collections of scientific literature in Europe, with over 500,000 volumes. In addition, an exciting range of new pedagogical technologies in the building, as well as the layout itself, are innovations to the public’s approach to texts and learning.

Pritzker juror Lord Peter Palumbo praised Rolex Learning Center as having “a vitality and an excitement to it, as well as an originality that you don’t often see.”

Under the Rolex Learning Center’s roof will be an array of facilities, for study, teaching, research, socializing, entertainment and administration.  This is a radical and highly experimental building, designed for new ways of study and interaction in the 21st century.

The Learning Center has been open to the public since February and the official inauguration ceremony will take place Thursday, May 27, 2010.

Herzog images courtesy of Alain Herzog/ EPFL, SANAA.  Suzuki image courtesy of Hisao Suzuki/ EPFL, SANAA

        

The parameters of the design were determined by the desire for autonomy of form and materiality, as well as the new building’s interaction with the house and pool already on the land. An existing pavilion, acting as pool and summerhouse, was demolished and replaced by a new volume.

The new building’s form is a response to its position on the site, and the angled façade reflects the client’s desire for living areas offering different degrees of openness or seclusion. The exterior is faced with horizontal, open-jointed cedar batten cladding, which further emphasizes the geometry of the building.

The three-floor building’s overall volume is 1 000m“. Garage and necessary storage and utility rooms are located in the basement. The open-plan ground floor comprises one large living, eating and cooking area, and there are three bedrooms and a recessed balcony on the upper floor.

The interior, also designed by nimmrichter cda, is defined by its core faced in chestnut wood, which encompasses the entrance hall, with cloakroom and externally-accessible guest toilet, and the staircase.
The box delineates the eating-living area and contrasts with the dark, rough concrete floor and the black kitchen elements.

The building is Minergie® certified, a registered quality label for low-energy buildings. The energy concept includes making use of the neighboring house’s existing heating system and using solar panels to heat water for both houses.

        

The curtain wall is on hand the protection against weathering for the cross point. On the other hand it also gives shade and shelter. The perforation of the façade panels plays with the logo of the hotel, abstract its. Interesting spaces inside / outside are created which emphasizes the communication between them.  The design team included, Thomas Bärtl, Michael Prodinger and Guido Trampitsch.

        

The architecture signed by Simone Micheli, a reflection:

“The i-SUITE interior architectural plan lays its foundations in the concept of modern luxury I developed after a thorough and targeted thinking. It is a light and a stirring thought, at any moment we are able to choose where and how to live and to reinvent the environment we live in… This is an unforgettable area which enables our guests to enter a dimension of freedom, beauty and uniqueness unconsciously”.

The architecture signed by Giovanni Quadrelli, a reflection:

“It is a hotel neologism, a breakthrough in novelty. It is dynamic. It aims at the first magnitude. i-SUITE takes its inspiration from the changes, from the thrust of a light ray filtering, and then leaving the sea and by dodging the glass surfaces arrives to the hearth of things…  In an age when hotel industry dreams about sojourning in the space we designed the plan in midair underlining lightness and purity by using glass, we used soft colours blinded by the sun, white rippled walls resembling sinuous dresses beckoning the guest to follow them. The artificial lighting as well is instrumental in making the experience of the senses even intense. Nights of all colours, that is our first aurora, a bathing aurora!”

        

The other Praemium Imperiale Laureates for 2009 are: Painting – Hiroshi Sugimoto; Sculpture – Richard Long; Music – Alfred Brendel; Theatre/Film: Tom Stoppard.  www.praemiumimperiale.org