Singapore doesn’t do anything by halves, not least its built environment. Its skyline – a bristling congregation of glass and steel towers – is one of the most recognisable in Asia, built at a pace that reflects a city-state in perpetual rush. For much of its modern architectural history, the default mode was the hermetically sealed curtain wall: tinted, reflective, climate-controlled from within. Nature, if it featured at all, was confined to a lobby atrium or a rooftop amenity deck.
Explore this Singapore tower with a vertical garden
That began to change with the work of local studios such as WOHA, whose porous, vegetation-draped towers championed a fundamentally different model – architecture that breathes rather than seals. Thomas Heatherwick’s Eden, completed in 2019, pushed the argument further, wrapping each of its 20 apartments in cascading planted balconies, proposing greenery as structure rather than ornament. Developers have taken note and Singapore’s Green Mark certification framework has steadily raised expectations.
Park Nova, the first South-East Asian project by London-based PLP Architecture is the latest – and perhaps most arresting – entry in this conversation. Commissioned by Hong Kong and Macau developers Shun Tak Holdings after several conventional schemes for the Orchard Boulevard site had failed to satisfy, PLP was approached for something more distinctive. ‘There was immediate alignment from the moment the narrative was shared,’ says Tina Qiu, partner at PLP and project lead, ‘and the project evolved with an unusual degree of continuity from that moment.’
The building’s 21 storeys hold 54 residences, each extending into a deep, planted private terrace. Inspired by the site’s history as a nutmeg orchard and the butterflies it once attracted, the undulating floor-plates shift orientation from floor to floor, producing a silhouette that changes from every angle and ensures no two apartments are identical. The form is purposeful: projecting balconies, between half a metre and nearly three metres, reduce solar radiation by approximately 70 per cent, allowing for completely clear glazing throughout. ‘Colours remain true, skies are accurately perceived, and subtle changes in light and weather are felt throughout the day,’ Qiu notes.
Securing approval for these varying balcony depths – a first for residential construction in Singapore at this scale – required complex dialogues with planning authorities, with the team wielding environmental, experiential and maintenance credentials in spades. The 35 plant species were grown off-site and tested before installation; ongoing maintenance is handled by gondolas that move around the façade on a programmed timetable.
For Qiu, what distinguishes Park Nova from its biophilic predecessors is the insistence that greenery is woven into the fabric of domestic life itself. ‘It sits directly alongside living and sleeping spaces, fundamentally reshaping what high-rise living can feel like.’ In Singapore, a city that has always treated ambition as infrastructure, that feels like the next logical step.