Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

By Savitha Hira

Combining indoor & outdoor spaces, and providing a platform for a wide array of activities,
this vibrant, 21st-century cardo maximus (grand arcade), also connects to the subway and other transportation. 

The 9-million-square-foot Marina Bay Sands is a beautiful blend of geometry and mathematics- an integration of order and complexity… a flying visit…

It takes years of planning, executing and finishing gargantuan structures that become beacons of socio-cultural progress and hi-profile entertainment venues for public at large.

Moshe Safdie’s uber-luxury integrated resort and urban district that anchors the Singapore waterfront creating a gateway to the city, is a four-year industrious engineering marvel. With a cantilever approximately 65 meters beyond – the worlds largest ever – the Sky Park is one of the most remarkable architectural, landscape and engineering feats.  The other one being the Art Science Museum with its 21 naturally lighted galleries.

Photography:  Marina Bay Sands Digital Media

Photography: John Horner

Renowned American landscape architect Peter Walker (PWP) propagates landscaping for the Sky Park - a 2.5 - 3 acre tropical oasis, celebrating the notion of the Garden City that has been the underpinning of Singapore’s urban design strategy. This surprising garden in the sky with 250 trees and 650 plants features an infinity edge swimming pool, lushly planted garden rooms featuring mature trees, a public viewing deck with 270 degree views, two restaurants, and a night club.

Photography: Frank Pinckers

Photography: Timothy Hursley 

Accomplishing a landscape that complements the scale of the architecture, PWP conceived of an early tree-procurement strategy as well as a temporary-nursery plan that permitted plants to be sourced overseas from many locales, transported into Singapore, and grown near the site for over a year prior to installation. This strategy also facilitated a quick installation of the large quantities of mature trees with a high success rate.

Photograph: Courtesy PWPLA

Photograph: Courtesy PWPLA

Art Science Museum: Based upon Moshe Safdie’s philosophy that art and science together can excite and inform visitors in a new way, the Museum is composed of two principle parts – the base, embedded in the earth and surrounded by the Bay’s water and a giant lily pond, and a flower-like structure made of 10 petals, generated by the geometry of spheroids of varying radii that seemingly floats above the landscaped pond base. The petals rise towards the sky in varying heights, each crowned by a skylight, drawing in daylight, penetrating the base and illuminating the galleries within.

Photography:  Timothy Hursley 

Photography:  Timothy Hursley 

With an envelope composed of double-curved Fiber Reinforced Polymer [FRP], the asymmetrical museum structure, conceived by Arup, reaches upward to a height of 60 meters and is supported by an elaborate steel lattice structure - an assembly supported by ten columns and tied down at its center by a basket-like diagrid–a sculptural centerpiece that accommodates the asymmetrical forces that the building’s form generates. The result in an efficient resolution of the structural forces for the building, giving it a seemingly weightless quality as it hovers above the ground. The vertical sides of each petal are sheathed in bead-blasted stainless steel panels. The unprecedented use of FRP has made possible the joint-less, continuous skin for each of the sail-like surfaces achieving a sense of lightness with their gleaming petals. The dish-like roof form collects rainwater and drains it through an oculus, creating a waterfall through the center of the museum that feeds an interior pond. Entered through a free-standing glass pavilion, the museum has three levels of galleries with a total area of 6,000 square meters.

Artist's Impression 

With Marina Bay Sands - a microcosm of a city rooted in Singapore’s culture, climate, and contemporary life, Ar. Moshe Safdie weaves together the components of a complex program into a dynamic urban crossroads and public meeting place.