Singapore, Singapore
Located on a strategic urban node, TMW Maxwell Mixed-Use Development by Formwerkz Architects is a high-rise mixed development in the heart of the Singapore’s Central Business District that emphasizes biophillic principles, blending green spaces with urban living.
Responding to the post-pandemic Work-From-Anywhere (WFA) trend amongst urban dwellers, the architects wanted to create a biophilic home in the city where live, work and play occur seamlessly and creatively.
The key feature of the project is the tower of sky gardens designed on the building’s gabled end facing the main street.
For all its design design features, the TMW Maxwell Mixed-Use Development has been awarded a 2024 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
These series of pocket gardens in the air, stacked, staggered and inter-connected to become a vertical park accessible to all the residents, from all floors.
A myriad of landscape and spatial concepts, facilities and ambiences carry different characteristics across floors.
Activity areas span from playful celebrative party decks, lazy breakfast bar counters, amphitheaters for small movie screenings, discussion and quiet spaces for work, meditative decks for communal yoga, cocktail bars for social gatherings, to sky jacuzzies to enjoy the setting sun.
The architects envisioned these vertical gardens spaces to be the new Third Space for the residents and the new face of live, work and play.
Embedded amongst the fine grain historical shophouse clusters and a stone throw away from ultra-sleek high-rise office towers, the development looks to engage the richness of both worlds, celebrating the diversity of city living.
At grade, the development’s 3-storey commercial podium is split, sunken and elevated to break down the scale of the building; façade fenestrations and grids carefully articulate the modularity of the shophouse rows.
Street porosity and circulation is maximized with the introduction of multiple internal streets.
In the development forecourt, a sunken garden terrace leads street activity down to the basement retail.
A pedestrian mall on grade flanks the long elevation of the building, connecting the existing major vehicular and pedestrian network.
An elevated pedestrian street runs adjacent to this, verdantly landscaped and fitted with street furniture.
Through these thoroughfares, public events and social interaction are encouraged, tied together and lush tropical planting throughout the weaving paths.
Landscape flows uninterrupted from the street upwards to the apex of the tower, creating a new urban face and revitalized way of living in the city.
Project: TMW Maxwell Mixed-Use Development
Architects: Formwerkz Architects
Lead Architects: Alan Tay and Seetoh Kum Loon
Contractor: Vision E&C Pte Ltd.
Client: Dave Lim CEL Development Pte Ltd.
Photographs: Courtesy of the Architects
