The project brief called for a new boutique office and the reconstruction of a pair of heritage-listed shophouses. WOHA was commissioned only after their demolition to reconstruct the shopfront (up to 7.5m depth) in accordance with Singapore's Urban Redevelopment Authority's conservation and planning guidelines, and to design an entirely new, contemporary rear wing.

As the original floor levels with their low ceiling heights were retained, the front end of the shophouses was deemed more suitable for meeting rooms, while the service end accommodated a mechanised carpark. The idea was to strategically lift up the open plan offices within the upper 4 floors where the floor plate size is maximised, higher headroom is gained, better views are enjoyed and more natural daylight is accessed from the sides. Every flat roof area is also transformed into roof gardens with the attic featuring the office’s recreational lounge from which unblocked panoramic views of Hong Lim Park and PARKROYAL on Pickering Hotel can be enjoyed.

Unlike a typical internalised courtyard, the main design strategy was to invert the shophouse typology by carving out valuable floor area to create an externalised, urban, public pocket park at the very heart of the office instead. A café, break-out areas and meeting rooms are organised around this park, enjoying the greenery and light that it brings to the deep plan. This public gesture further serves to reduce the intermediate scale of the 9-storey building to a more intimate, human scale at the pocket park below.

The formal architectural language of fractal, triangulated geometry originated from the need to comply with authority requirements of having splayed corners as the building is bounded by three roads. This inspired a chiselled expression that was carried through in both plan and elevation, taking the form of internal angled walls and external slanted planes, revealing a concave curtain wall like that of crystal embedded in the hollow lower strata of its atrium park space. Shading was also built into the formal language by means of an integrated sun screen within the curtain wall system and a series of perforated aluminium panels.

Growing Trend

There is a commonly known trend in a small country, Singapore, where low-rise old buildings and residential shop houses will be demolished and redevelop into tall office buildings & high-rise residential apartments to meet the demand of growing economy. Places like Central Business District, Geyland & Bugis are prone to this redevelopment, as these places are clustered with low-rise old buildings and shop houses built before World War Two.

If you happen to pass by one of the quiet back lane near North Canal Road, you will see an unique new commercial building located at 48 North Canal Road, which was built on a plot of land previously occupied by two old shop houses. This redevelopment provided eight (8) parking lots to meet stipulated parking need. As the plot of land was small and made no economic sense to provide conventional basement parking, thus without much hesitation and difficulties, the developer, Kim Eng Properties Pte Ltd had opted for MHE-Demag’s automatic car parking system for the redevelopment to maximize land utilization.

Attractive Automatic Parking Solution Meeting Pressing Need

In consideration of the site requirements, MHE-Demag had supplied and installed a Speedy Parking System, also called Elevator Tower Parking (DET), consists of one car elevator, 8 fixed height vehicle parking platforms and one slide-up auto door for security purpose. The parking system can take in car with weight up to 2,250kg, maximum car size 2.15m (W) x 2m (H) x 5.25m (L). It is designed to rapidly move & park vehicles within a fixed multiple levels of parking zone incorporated inside the building and it takes less than 3 minutes to retrieve a vehicle. The high speed elevator is fabricated with an inner turntable to facilitate vehicles entering and leaving the parking system.

Certainly, the parking system must be easy to operate via an integrated control; provision of touch screen mounted next to the auto door will further enhance the operation and monitoring of the system in a single glance. For collection of vehicles, the drivers just need to punch in a 4 digits pin number on the touch screen panel and system will send the elevator to the correct position to retrieve the vehicle. Surely, there are many safety features built into the parking system to ensure safety of the users and vehicles, such as the utilization of various sensors to ensure proper positioning of car on the pallets, elevator and also to detect the present of vehicles and height clearance. In addition, the system is designed with high speed, low noise and low vibration to meet the stringent regulations of local authority to minimize noise disturbance to nearby building dwellers.

Therefore, we are not surprised that this Speedy Parking System is highly preferred for middle to large-sized building projects, as the system is effective and furthermore space saving, capable of moving vehicles in fast fashion and yet quiet manner.