Unbuilt Singapores

Singapore is filled with cool architecture. But there are almost as many amazing building designs from over the years that were never built! Here are some of the coolest ones:

Singapore Westwood was a 2008 proposal by MVRDV to add additional dramatically cantilevered penthouses on top of an existing residential tower near Orchard Road (along Grange Road). Unfortunately, this was never built.

Scotts Tower (which was completed with a pretty cool design by UNStudio in 2017) was originally supposed to be built according to this crazy cantilevered tower by OMA (Koolhaas’s firm did the original proposal in 2006)

Resorts World, a huge integrated resort designed by Michael Graves was completed in 2010 on Singapore’s Sentosa island. But there were two (crazy) alternate proposals which were never built. The Eighth Wonder consortium would have built a resort within a giant artificial volcano, and Kerzner International planned to build an Atlantis resort with an incredible design by Frank Gehry!

Singapore’s Sports Hub features the largest dome in the world and was completed in 2014. But did you know that there were two other proposals to rebuild Singapore’s National Stadium?

South Beach Singapore was completed by Norman Foster in 2016. During the design competition, UNStudio proposed this curvaceous alternative.

UNStudio also submitted a design for the Jewel Changi Airport competition, with a domed design similar to the completed building by Moshe Safdie.

Marina Bay was master planned through a competition with two finalists, IM Pei and Kenzo Tange. From what I can tell, the final layout for Marina Bay is similar to a toned-down version of IM Pei’s scheme.

Moshe Safdie and Paul Rudolph competed for the design of Marina Centre (now known as Marina Square), which was eventually constructed in the 1980’s by an impressive collaboration between DP Architects, John Portman Associates, Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates, John Burgee and Philip Johnson, and Tsao and McKown.

In addition to his completed The Concourse and The Colonnade buildings in Singapore, Paul Rudolph designed a number of unbuilt projects in Singapore such as the Marina Centre design and the below scheme for Institution Hill. A horrible generic condominium was eventually built instead!

The Capitol, a mixed use development completed by Richard Meier in 2015, attracted entries from architects around the world, including Moshe Safdie and Herzog & de Meuron!

Moshe Safdie’s work in Singapore goes back far, he even designed an entire HDB estate at Simpang New Town (the site was never developed).

Spaceport Singapore was planned to open in 2009 at Changi Airport and literally take tourists into space, but the project was never completed and has gone silent.

Pinnacle at Duxton was a high density public housing competition held in 2001, which was won with a series of linked towers designed by ArcStudio. WOHA’s competition entry for the Duxton competition (pictured below) explored new concepts for green, sustainable high-rise living. WOHA Architects developed these concepts for a later commission to design Skyville @ Dawson, which opened in 2015.

The Singapore Cloud Centre was an unbuilt predecessor to the Gardens by the Bay, designed by Geoffery Bawa.

EDITT Tower was an unbuilt design by Ken Yeang and it’s a shame that it wasn’t built!

Permeable Lattice City was a conceptual proposal by WOHA Architects to build a high-density tropical city of the future with ample public spaces and amenities on Singapore’s southern islands!

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