SIA Architectural Design Awards 2024: 6 standout projects to know

Located at a vantage point where a heritage neighbourhood meets modern Singapore—Chye Hua Seng Wee Kee was once a remittance house situated where Chinatown meets Clarke Quay. Today, it shines as a boutique hotel, reimagined by award winning Woha Architects.

For this purpose, the firm extended four historic four-storey shophouses from 1936 and included an additional five-storeys. Although a building reimagined in the era of contemporary architecture, 21 Carpenter is equally a celebration of history and heritage while bearing a strong affiliation to biophilic design. The architects used reclaimed heritage materials, worked with local artisans and stayed true to their zero plastics ethos across the entire hotel. 21 Carpenter is in the process of attaining the BCA Green Mark Certification.

In homage to the building’s storied past and its cultural significance to early immigrants, 21 Carpenter’s facade in Shanghai plaster—which dates back to the 1930s—displays a list of cities and regions that remittances were sent. The firm has also carefully woven in poignant verses from vintage remittance letters, into the elegant design of the aluminium facade of the new addition.

Inside, the rooms bridge the gap between the past and present with Asian design elements, custom furniture and a warm colour palette. The new addition, above the first four levels, is contemporary in design with light-filled rooms—think floor-to-ceiling windows with city views—and includes many intimate gathering spaces. Its rooftop infinity pool is the first exposed stainless-steel pool in Singapore.

Woha Architects won over the jury for its artful reimagination of an adaptive reuse project in how it would lend itself to Singapore skyline—”characterised by its moderate scale but highly complex volumetric composition”. They added: “The architects have created delightful spaces through the juxtaposition between old and new, allowing for fresh readings of the conserved building.”

In case you missed it: How Woha turns a historic remittance house into a brutalist, design-led urban hotel

The Gear, by Surbana Jurong Consultants, in collaboration with Kajima Design

Category: B1 ​Office buildings

The Gear, a seven-storey building at Changi Business Park on a 5,235 sqm plot, is Japanese architectural and construction firm Kajima Design’s regional headquarters—its first and overseas innovation centre. Home to five state-of-the-art laboratories, The Gear will serve as a hub for Kajima Design’s groundbreaking research in sustainable construction materials, advanced building systems, occupant well-being, and smart technologies. 

Sleek and contemporary in design, the building operates as a collaborative workspace for its own teams and partners, integrating offices with rooms that foster R&D and innovation. Its skeleton-and-infill design concept with exposed structural frames along its perimeter caters to that flexibility while allowing for future spatial changes. The Gear, in the words of the Japanese firm, is envisioned as a “smart wellness office” prioritising occupant wellness and that of the planet with the use of sustainable building solutions. It has been certified Super Low Energy by the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore and recognised as a Platinum-certified building by International WELL Building Institute.

Read more: Studio tour: A venture capital firm’s disco-inspired office in San Francisco

Rumah Kechik by Kaizen Architecture

Category: Award for B6​ Overseas commercial projects and F4 Overseas interior architecture projects

This adaptive reuse project involving three 200-year-old shophouses in the Unesco World Heritage City of Malacca scored Kaizen Architecture two awards. The firm was tasked with adapting three run down shophouses to blend seamlessly with an adjoining, existing hotel. The new extension would house a restaurant at the lower level and function rooms and a gym in the upper level, as well as cater to future expansion plans at the rear of the building. 

In preserving the heritage of the shophouses and the location it stood in, Kaizen Architecture reinterpreted it as a traditional Malay home, which usually consisted of a main portion and a smaller secondary one that would house the kitchen and servant staff. This extension was visualised in the same manner as “rumah kechik”, which translates to “small house”, with a linear arrangement of spaces that led from the front door to the back of the building anchored by an open courtyard.

This allowed the architects to organise the seating of the restaurant across the length and breadth of the space and in various settings with furnishings that mirrored domestic settings. Other features such as louvred timber screens, carefully placed windows and portals add a contemporary touch while allowing for dramatic lighting and ventilation within. 

The juxtaposition of modern elements with traditional features, manipulation of space through careful subtraction and insertion of structural elements, repurposing of the existing such as the clay roof tiles of the original structure as decor elements, as well as the use of locally sourced and crafted interior elements such as Peranakan tiles, terracotta blocks and timber, all breathe reinforced life into Rumah Kechik.

Bukit Timah Railway Station and 9 Mile Platform by Kay Ngee Tan Architects

Category: E1 Public place making

The Rail Corridor, which is today a verdant green space running through the heart of Singapore, was once a working commuter railway line between the Malay peninsula and our city-state. In 2011, the Singapore government was able to acquire the land and sought to develop the stretch to suit their future plans for a green Singapore. Crucial to that plan is Kay Ngee Tan Architects’ restoration of the two existing structures: the Bukit Timah Railway Station and Staff Quarters. They sit nestled within the lush greenery of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, at the midway point of the 24km Rail Corridor. 

The architects have restored the two structures, retaining original elements such as track switching levers, a ticketing booth window and even a replica of a signals diagram in the rail traffic control room—these stand as vestiges of Singapore’s past and serve to educate the public on the country’s heritage. Replicas of railway station wagons, brightly painted, sit on the tracks for children to experience transportation of yore.  

The Staff Quarters has been restored to house a café, with furnishings and furniture adding a touch of nostalgic charm. 

Church of The Blessed Sacrament by RDC Architects

Category: Award for E3 Conservation 

The Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Commonwealth was part of a wave of modern Catholic churches that were built to cater to the population that were moving to housing estates outside of the core central region of Singapore. It was gazetted for restoration after being given Conservation status by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore in 2005 and closed for renovations between 2021 to 2023. 

RDC Architects Pte Ltd in working under the strict guidelines governing conservation buildings, have retained the structures  original architectural elements while adding improvements such as a wheelchair ramp at the entrance and replacing its windows with low-emissivity glass and wrought-iron screens for better energy efficiency. A distinctive feature of the church are the tent-shaped folds of its conical roof, which was retained, but painted grey. The architects, however, replaced the asbestos—a once-popular construction material which has since late 1980s been banned as it posed its health risks to the occupants—with lightweight metal tiles. Similar metal tiles resembling timber were used in the ceiling panels to replace the timber that had fallen into decay. Acoustic felt was also fitted on these ceiling panels to eliminate sound reverberation. The church reopened its doors to worshippers on October 31 last year. 

In case you missed it: Home tour: A 1940s church conversion to a multi-storey loft in Toronto

House of Parts by L Architects

Category: Award for F1​ Residential

A renovation project for a three-storey terrace home, House of Parts is an unbridled celebration of nature’s forms that are the basis of architecture: wood, stone and clay. This project by L Architects proves that architectural interiors of small houses can be made functional and interesting by the delineation of space with expert manipulation of existing elements, without corrupting their natural shape, form or colour.

Wood is the uncrowned hero of the home—covering walls, windows, staircases, and acting as unobtrusive space dividers—seeming to dictate how light filters through the home and plays on the nuances of the design. The flooring of the first storey equally holds its own—engineered ceramic tile has been cut into various organic shapes resulting in flowing grout lines that form a playful pattern of their own. 

The whiteness of the grout lines provide a striking contrast with the charcoal grey tiles, while wooden steps designed in strips exhibit a bold clash of materials, yet without conflict. Artistic curves abound in other parts of the home as well, notably the curved kitchen with a round sink and the customised dining table with a brushed Olivo Grolla limestone top—a small tree trunk slots in the rotunda cutout in one of its corners. 

Such subtle mergers of the indoors and outdoors can be seen in the master bathroom as well which has a small tree. Loose pebbles and other stone elements lend the space a zen-like ambience. House of Parts is home to a couple with two young children, and has something for everyone—from calm to playful delight to quirk.

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