Tiger Tales

Orchard Road Revival

A new architectural icon is helping usher Singapore’s best-known shopping street into the 21st century, writes SONIA KOLESNIKOV

It’s all-but-impossible to miss. Even on a street lined with eye-catching shopping malls, the ION Orchard cuts a striking figure. Its shimmering, wave-like glass skin, made up of hundreds of triangular panels, stands in stark contrast to the styles typically favoured by mall developers. And at night, thousands of LEDs in its façade combine to serve as a giant beacon for shoppers on Orchard Road, Singapore’s premier shopping district.

The ION Orchard’s location, above a subway station at the street’s busiest intersection, was destined to make it prime retail space. That’s why its developers, Singapore’s CapitaLand Limited and Hong Kong’s Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited, were bent on creating a mixed-use development – the property encompasses an eight-storey mall and a high-end residential tower – that would be an icon and a meeting place. “With its unique organic architectural form and media façade (as the high-definition video walls glowing brightly in many cities around the world have become known) we believe it’s going to become a recognisable landmark for Singapore,” says Soon Su Lin, CEO of Orchard Turn Developments, manager of the project.

Once a tree-lined dirt track passing through nutmeg plantations and fruit orchards, Orchard Road began its transformation into a commercial thoroughfare at the turn of the 20th century. Over the following decades, the road slowly grew in stature but it wasn’t until the 70s and 80s that commercial development hit its stride. Today, Orchard Road is Singapore’s shopping hub, home to more than 40 malls with nearly 750,000sqm of total retail space.

Of all the new malls and redeveloped properties on Orchard, ION is the one that stands out. Ever since Orchard Road MRT Station opened in 1987, the plum site overhead had remained vacant. First offered to developers in the late 90s as a hotel site, it found no takers and thus remained an urban park, famously busy on Sundays as the rallying point for domestic helpers on their day off. So when the Urban Redevelopment Authority once again offered the site for sale by tender in 2005, it allowed for a broader commercial use, but also designated the space as a “landmark”. Owing to the site’s strategic location and high visibility, it was clear that the ION’s architects would have to come up with a “wow” factor. Hopes were high that the new building would create an instantly recognisable picture-postcard image for the city-state’s marquee shopping area.

For Benoy Architects, it was important that the new building acknowledge the site’s history, but also define modern retailing to passersby. “ION was first an orchard, then a park with a tree-lined space, so we tried to recall some of those organic forms,” says Simon Blore, executive director at Benoy’s Hong Kong office.

The result: A curvilinear glass-and-metal structure that draws on natural imagery through architectural features like metal pillars and glass roofs, which are meant to represent tree trunks and leaf canopies. The irregularly shaped skin of the building is intended to resemble the skin of a peeled fruit, the residential tower design symbolises a green shoot growing up from the canopy below and the transparent curved glass entry to the MRT station suggests a water drop. The organic metaphor continues inside the building, where an artificially-lit glass-roofed atrium with a distinctive grid-like pattern is meant to resemble large tropical leaves.

Beyond the striking design, which earned an award in 2006 from MAPIC – the world’s leading business-to-business organisation dedicated to retail real estate – it is the building’s integrated media façade, featuring one of the largest LED walls in Asia, which places it squarely in the 21st century. The ever-changing display of motion graphics, live telecasts and mall ads won’t please purists. However, as the architectural equivalent of a living canvas, it is an instantly recognisable feature and a downtown icon in the tradition of New York’s Times Square or Tokyo’s Shibuya crossing.

“Architecture has a certain permanence to it, but retail changes all the time, with new products, new companies. We wanted a building that could adapt rapidly and constantly to change,” Simon explains.

Richard Hassell of WOHA architects points out that architecture has always communicated with its façades, but that a media façade offers architecture the chance to communicate in a much less abstract and more familiar way. “The potential is for public spaces to expand through the internet and live link-ups... for these screens to expand the public realm beyond the limits of the immediate space.”

Simon feels that having a building that can change with the times, almost at the flick of a switch, is more relevant to today’s world than something that is static. “I wouldn’t say it’s appropriate for every function. For a school, a court of justice, a government building, you want a sense of permanence and reliability, a sense ofheritage and history. Whereas for retail, this is a building as a temple for shopping and it’s main function is to try to speak about that in as many ways as possible.”

EYE ON THE FUTURE

Aware that resting on their laurels is not an option, Singapore’s tourism board, retail associations and developers work together to maintain Orchard Road’s high profile. A recent S$40 million (AU$32 million) revamp included some repaving and widening of sidewalks, and the addition of new lampposts, etched glass panels with tropical plant and floral designs, and tall orchid flower totems. More obvious is the addition of three new malls this year. Along with the ION Orchard and Orchard Central, 313@ Somerset will also open its doors by the end of the year.

The added competition has prompted other developers to give existing spaces a facelift. Mandarin Gallery at the Meritus Mandarin Hotel will reopen by the end of the year with four floors of shops, while Knightsbridge with its 7,700sqm of shopping space at the Grand Park Orchard will roll out the welcome mat in the first half of next year.

“These refurbishments have not happened by chance. It’s all coordinated and fits with the recent refurbishment of the street itself,” explains Chew Tiong Heng, director of destination marketing at the Singapore Tourism Board. “We want to position Orchard Road as a great shopping street and it’s a work in progress. We need to put in a lot more work. For example, retailers also need to look at how to differentiate themselves from one another.”