Designs On Asia: EDEN, A Skyscraper Taking Garden City To New Heights In Singapore
PUBLISHED December 4th, 2020 03:00 pm | UPDATED July 22nd, 2024 05:42 pm
Any property would have trouble living up to a bold name like Eden, but one apartment building in Newton comes closer to it than most. Developed by Swire Properties, EDEN Skyscraper takes Singapore’s ‘garden city’ concept to stunning new levels – 104.5 metres in the air, to be exact. All concrete blades and overflowing foliage, this residential skyscraper gives the impression of a tower split open by nature.
A sharp departure from the glass-and-steel boxes, EDEN slices upward with three earth-toned ‘blades’ of concrete, enfolding a 20-storey stack of apartments. Get closer and you’ll notice a curious texture of dappled swirls that’s far from random – it’s a coded ode to Singapore’s terrain. Derived from a topographic map of Singapore’s natural contours, this abstract pattern was used to give the concrete a raised, tactile finish.
To find the perfect shade of earth to match, Heatherwick Studio – the design brains behind showpieces like New York’s Lantern House and Shanghai’s 1000 Trees – experimented with more than a hundred hues of deep red, purple, and brown. Their final choice allows EDEN’s facade to shimmer a sandy-brown, almost golden, in evening sun.
As the name promises, this strange tower of earth is richly fertile. Blooming from between the concrete slabs are lush garden balconies, each curved like shells and overflowing with tropical trees and hanging plants. Thanks to a bespoke casting technique, the pale, concrete underside of each balcony comes polished to a gem-like sheen. If you’ve ever seen The Hive at Nanyang Technological University, these organic shapes might seem familiar – both buildings were designed by the same folks, after all.
To make the most of natural breeze, the first-storey apartment is raised 23 metres above the ground. This leaves plenty of room for more airy gardens on the ground floor, paved in green granite and dotted with top-shaped Spun chairs – perfect for spinning and shooting the breeze. Even the swimming pool is tiled in turquoise-hued ceramic to mimic the look of a lake.
Clearly, it’s all about borrowing from natural forms here. To enter the building proper, you’ll stroll down a canyon-like corridor lined with black granite – only 1.5 metres wide, but with a sheer ‘cliff face’ soaring over 15 metres. Step through into an 18-metre-high lobby overhung with living plant chandeliers, and hop into lifts clad in stone wall panels.
Each four-bedroom apartment here sprawls across an entire floor – talk about having your own castle. At the heart of the apartment is a large central living space, with a maze of rooms flowing outward from it. Echoing the ‘landscape’ of the facade, the interior surfaces celebrate organic materials in all their natural imperfection. Most strikingly, there’s the parquet flooring laid in herringbone-patterned slate, featuring dark knot marks that are normally avoided as defects.
The living area opens onto lush balconies in three directions – lounging there, you’ll get 270-degree views over the city and floods of natural light. Three balconies – plus two more in each master bedroom – might sound like overkill, but the design vision behind it was connectedness. Rather than being sealed off from the world, home in EDEN is about smelling, seeing, and savouring the landscape we exist in. We can’t deny it looks like heaven.
EDEN Skyscraper is located at 2 Draycott Park, Singapore 259386.
All photos courtesy of Hufton+Crow
