CapitaSpring Tower in Singapore Is Reaching New Heights of Biophilic Architecture

This newsletter is about exploring the possibilities of vertical landscaping in high-rise buildings. Participate in a dialogue with us as we check out the relevance of landscaping in a high-density urban environment.?

The Story

Making room for green spaces in urban areas is an overwhelming challenge. The urban heat island effect, lack of connection with nature, and deteriorating citizen health are direct implications of increasing concretization. In one of the world’s most densely populated cities such as Singapore, addressing these issues is crucial. The recently completed CapitaSpring tower in Singapore is a shining example that provides a solution to this problem.

The soaring glass and aluminum facade of the building beautifully bursts open to reveal plants and 80,000 trees growing hundreds of feet above the ground. The so-called “green oasis” provides a stunning view of spiral garden pathways to the passerbys’ at the street level. These gardens are equipped with exercise machines, benches, tables, and layers of tropical flora.

CapitaSpring tower stands tall and proud at 280 meters (919 feet) and is one of the Asian city-state's tallest skyscrapers. The building is privately owned by real estate giants CapitaLand and Mitsubishi Estate. Although the building is private, the owners have kept the landscaped areas open to the public for keeping up with the government’s initiative to provide sufficient open spaces in business districts.

The 4500 square foot large rooftop of the building is designed as an urban farm that supplies fruits, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers to three in-house restaurants of the building. Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in association with?Carlo Ratti Associati has designed the building. In an exclusive interview with CNN, Bjarke Ingels said, “ "Due to the unique character of Singapore's urbanism — both extremely dense and green — we decided to make the design a vertical exploration of tropical urbanism."

Explore: archizy