Description

This project description is an excerpt from the longer article “Tall Towers”. For a comparative analysis and further data on this and all other categories including accompanying graphs, please see the article “A Turning Point”.

Moulmein Rise was completed in 2003 by WOHA Architects in Singapore as a private, high-rise condominium for United Overseas Land (UOL) Group Limited. Prior to this project, the local real estate developer had specialized largely in hospitality, before its forays into the commercial and residential sectors. While most of UOL’s initial residential developments were located in the suburban estates in Singapore, Moulmein Rise was its first residential investment in the prime area of Novena, right at the fringe of downtown Singapore, including the core retail district of Orchard Road. In fact, UOL had already begun to establish its presence in Novena, rejuvenating this neighborhood then dominated by offices and both low- and high-rise residences with two mixed-use developments combining office and retail – Novena Square and United Square – that have since become the commercial core of the area. As the local property market took a beating from the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, UOL acquired a small 0.23-hectare site in the vicinity to be developed into mid- or high-rise housing.

Besides the proximity to both the commercial core at Novena and Orchard Road, the site for Moulmein Rise is just north of a wedge of green area surrounded by low-rise single-family attached dwellings, beyond which lie the presidential grounds. Given this uninterrupted view of the downtown to the south, along with the developer’s desire for a striking high-rise project that would maximize the returns on their investment, a closed competition was held among four architectural firms to obtain the optimal design solution. While the original intention by UOL was for a larger building footprint and a structure that would be lower in height, WOHA’s principals, having won the competition, convinced their clients otherwise. This resulted in a slender, modern, elegant design rising 28 storeys in height that fully leveraged on the views of the surroundings, but also the southern exposure and enhanced cross-ventilation through the smaller footprint and increases in height. With a floor area ratio or plot ratio of 2.8, the project reflects a high intensity of use on the site – a condition commonly found in land-scarce Singapore where at least 79 percent of the city-state’s residential building stock is in the form of high-rises with plot ratios of at least 2.1.
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Housing a total of 48 apartments units and two penthouses, with two units per floor, the design paid considerable attention to ensuring a high degree of privacy in this relatively upscale residential project. As such, two private elevators were installed to provide direct access to each apartment, with access for visitors limited to a separate public elevator. Other on-site amenities include an underground carpark, a small gymnasium, and a 50-meter lap pool set within a tropical garden that cascades down three tiers along the slope of the site towards the street front.

The most outstanding features of Moulmein Rise, it must be said, was its innovative incorporation of vernacular climate control strategies and expression of architectural variation through a recombination system of simple, standard elements. Located in the hot and humid equatorial region, Singapore is subjected to heavy convectional rains and seasonal monsoons. Therefore, as much as high-rise residences could have benefited from the cooler air higher up, the frequent rains often resulted in closed windows. Having lived in a high-rise public housing unit, Wong Mun Summ, one of WOHA’s principals, was eager to address this untapped ventilation and the entry of precipitation into the buildings by the force of winds from different directions. Moulmein Rise, which was their first large-scale residential project, presented a welcome opportunity to tackle these construction issues. A primary outcome of WOHA’s research was what they called a ‘tropical’ approach to high-rises, including the adoption of monsoon windows framed under the sills of the more conventional bay windows running continuously along the façade. Made of a perforated aluminum screen that sits perpendicular to the glass windows, this sliding panel is operated by a winder, affording natural ventilation into each of the units while also serving as a shelf, even when the glass windows are closed. Due to this inflow of air, particularly at the higher levels, many occupants found that it was no longer necessary to cool their apartments with the energy-consumptive air-conditioners in the evenings.
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Besides the monsoon windows to improve the cross-ventilation, the apartments have a depth of no more than 12.2 meters, further enhancing this purpose. To optimize solar performance, the building is oriented in a north-south direction, and each unit is open on three sides. All the windows are well-shaded with deep overhangs on the south and north façades, thereby reducing direct heat gains and protecting the windows from the driving rains.

In terms of the architectural design, WOHA’s other aspiration was to avoid a simple extrusion of the units upwards, and the creation of what merely would be an urban object. To this end, they strove to endow the façade with some ‘personality’, injecting a degree of variation and complexity such that each apartment would have its own identity. Indeed, from afar, Moulmein Rise stands out for its rhythmic façades. On the south, the two units on each floor are distinguished and expressed materially on the exterior, whereas the units on the west are defined by alternating bands of glass and overhangs, while the units on the east are fenestrated by a seemingly random array of bay windows and planters. On the north, the building is clad in bands of perforated aluminum screens concealing the air-conditioner ledges and drying racks but also serving as sunshading devices. These are displaced marginally on each floor, thereby revealing parts of the circling stairway and monsoon windows while generating a lively, environmental façade. By mixing these three basic elements – the monsoon windows, screens, and planters – in a repetitive, haphazard fashion, and then stacked up vertically in a random order, the architects successfully created visually complex yet engaging façades that doubled up as environmentally sensible curtain walls. Moreover, the extra space taken up by these elements is exempt from development tax but still counts as saleable area, a fact that contributes to the commercial interests of UOL, for the special façade features simultaneously enhance the amenity and value of the apartments. This notion of variation is taken up further and applied to the interiors with the creation of a modular system based on multiples of 0.30 meters that regulate a range of architectural dimensioning, such as floor-to-floor heights.

Within the typical units, the circulation spine bisects the apartments into two halves, with the master bedroom and open living and dining area located to the north for greater privacy, while the two smaller bedrooms and service areas such as the kitchen and bathrooms are located to the south. Flexibility in layout is achieved by the open living area, as well as the potential to combine the two smaller bedrooms as needed. The two penthouses each have a unique layout but generally adhere to the same spatial logic, albeit with larger master bedrooms and double-height open living and dining areas. Space-wise, the two typical units are 120 and 122 square meters, while the penthouses cover an area of 220 and 235 square meters, both of which are relatively commodious. Upon entering the units, there is a continuous flow in the interior, created largely through the circulation spine opening up to views on both the eastern and western ends, as well as across with the open space concept of the living and dining area. With a density of nearly 215 dwelling units per hectare, Moulmein Rise stands as an instance of an innovative, low-energy approach towards tropical, high-rise living, establishing its presence in a high-density urban setting that at the same time expresses a high degree of individuality through the plan and façade variations.

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Originally published in: Peter G. Rowe, Har Ye Kan, Urban Intensities: Contemporary Housing Types and Territories, Birkhäuser, 2014.