The Ardmore Residence in Singapore is located in a prime location close to the Orchard Road luxury shopping district and enjoys expansive views of the panoramic cityscape of Singapore City and the green areas of its immediate surroundings. The primary concept for the design of the residential tower is a multi-layered architectural response to the natural landscape inherent to the “Garden City” of Singapore. This landscape concept is integrated into the design by means of four large details.

The facade of the Ardmore Residence is derived from micro-design features, which interweave structural elements, such as bay windows and balconies, into one continuous line. The façade pattern is repeated for every four stories of the building, while rounded glass creates column-free corners. Intertwining lines and surfaces wrap the apartments, seamlessly incorporating sun screening, while ensuring that the inner qualities of the apartments and the outer appearance together form a unified whole. From a distance, the tower appears to adopt divergent contours, whereas up close, a sense of organic mutation and transition is achieved as one circumnavigates the building.

The apartments embody the idea of a “living landscape.” An indoor-outdoor living experience is established through the inclusion of large windows and double-height balconies. These elements offer views across Singapore, while the vertical balconies offset the horizontality of the more private interior spaces. With the terrace spaces integrated into everyday internal living scenarios, the links between interior and exterior spaces are made seamless. Bay window features on the façade create natural shading on the glass to minimize heat gain and provide opportunities for planting by the residents.

The floor plan chosen for the apartments is designed to increase the amount of daylight and take advantage of the panoramic views. The plan is based on an analysis of Renaissance villa prototypes – and the concept of a cours d’honneur – in-between spaces that enable visual links between different parts of the same house. Here, this concept is appropriated and translated in order to allow for visual interconnection between specific areas within the apartments. This concept furthermore increases privacy for sleeping rooms and adds a four-dimensional aspect to the layout, as both wings can operate separately, service different needs and be active at different times of the day.

An open framework is introduced at the base of the tower, which enables full connectivity and transparency across the ground level landscaping, while organizing the shared amenity facilities. While building regulations in Singapore specify both the height and area of high-rise buildings, views are also deemed to be essential for the occupants. The raised design of the Ardmore Residence integrally incorporates these parameters to take advantage of the potential they afford to optimize the design concept and simultaneously create a fully integrated living and leisure.

The Ardmore Residence has been built using reinforced concrete, involving a substantial amount of prefabrication work. Single-story shear walls cantilever from the inner core walls and support one floor above and one floor below at the same time. An interlocking system was developed to stagger cantilevered shear walls across the height of the tower to produce the building’s distinctive look. Combined with the rounded corners of the walls and suspended ceilings, the building is imbued with the romance of an ocean liner, sailing over the urban greenery of Singapore.