111 Somerset is a high-rise commercial building and shopping mall in Orchard, Singapore. The building was first known as Public Utilities Board Building (PUB Building) until 1995, and was later known as Singapore Power Building until 2008 when acquired by
YTL Corporation
YTL Corporation Berhad (, ) is a Malaysian infrastructure conglomerate, founded in 1955 by Yeoh Tiong Lay, after whom the group is named. YTL Corporation Berhad is an integrated infrastructure developer with extensive operations in countries ...
Pacific Star. It used to house the headquarters of
SP Group
Singapore Power Limited, trading as SP Group (abbreviation: SP) is a government-affliated electricity and gas distribution company in Singapore. Singapore Power Group is the corporatised entity of the former electricity and gas departments of t ...
, until it shifted to its current site at Kallang.
It includes two office towers and a retail podium. It is currently being managed by Perennial Real Estate Holdings.
History
The PUB Building, located near Singapore's main shopping belt of
Orchard Road
Orchard Road, often known colloquially as simply Orchard, is a major –long road in the Central Area of Singapore. Known as a famous tourist attraction, it is an upscale shopping area of Singapore, with numerous internationally renowned depa ...
, was built to accommodate several departments of the
Public Utilities Board
The Public Utilities Board (PUB) is a statutory board under the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment of the Government of Singapore responsible for ensuring a sustainable and efficient water supply in Singapore.
The PUB regulates an ...
which had outgrown its office space in
City Hall
In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...
.
[*]
The building was the result of an
architectural design competition
An architectural design competition is a type of design competition in which an organization that intends on constructing a new building invites architects to submit design proposals. The winning design is usually chosen by an independent panel o ...
. In July 1971, a contest to design PUB's corporate headquarters was launched. Of 23 submissions, four were picked by a jury headed by then PUB chairman
Lim Kim San
Lim Kim San ( zh, c=林金山, p=Lín Jīnshān; 30 November 1916 – 20 July 2006) was a Singaporean politician who served as a Cabinet minister between 1965 and 1981. He was credited for leading a successful public housing programme in the ...
.
The proposal by the now-defunct Singapore
architectural firm
In the United States, an architectural firm or architecture firm is a business that employs one or more licensed architects and practices the profession of architecture; while in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark and other countri ...
Group 2 Architects (1970–1978), formed by Ong Chin Bee and Tan Puay Huat, won.
Built to a height of 100 metres (328 ft),
the PUB Building was completed in 1977; construction cost
S$32 million.
It was renamed as the Singapore Power Building, after PUB's electricity and
gas
Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma).
A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...
operations were
corporatised to Singapore Power on 1 October 1995.
The Singapore Power Building was renovated in 2006, when Singapore Power chose not to redevelop its corporate headquarters. Instead, it opted to refurbish and
reclad the building in silvery metal.
On 29 January 2007, PUB moved out of the building to join its parent ministry,
, at the Environment Building on
Scotts Road
Scotts Road () is a road located in Central Area of Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of ...
.
When YTL Pacific Star acquired the building in February 2008, it was renamed to its present name. The new owner undertook a
S$50 million renovation and added more retail space to the building by converting offices, a cafeteria, empty spaces in the lobby areas as well as the carpark and the auditorium.
It now has of offices, of retail space and a outdoor refreshment area. The reopening of the complex in 2010 included a
FairPrice Finest supermarket.
Architecture
Design concept
In the 1971 design competition for the PUB Building, the other three finalists proposed high-rise structures to project a corporate image. However, Group 2 Architect's winning design, in the jury's words, allowed "natural form and
function
Function or functionality may refer to:
Computing
* Function key, a type of key on computer keyboards
* Function model, a structured representation of processes in a system
* Function object or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriente ...
to achieve
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
and
dignity
Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically. It is of significance in morality, ethics, law and politics as an extension of the Enlightenment-era concepts of inherent, inalienable ...
" for the building.
The 17-storey high PUB building shows the influence of
Gerhard M. Kallmann's 1962
Boston City Hall
Boston City Hall is the seat of city government of Boston, Massachusetts. It includes the offices of the mayor of Boston and the Boston City Council. The current hall was built in 1968 to assume the functions of the Old City Hall.
It is a cont ...
, also a competition winner, which was, in turn, influenced by
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
's
Sainte Marie de La Tourette
Sainte Marie de La Tourette is a Dominican Order priory, located on a hillside near Lyon, France, designed by the architect Le Corbusier, the architect’s final building. The design of the building began in May 1953 and completed in 1961. The comm ...
(1957–1960) by .
The development of the form of the PUB Building was
mannerist
Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...
, however, in contrast to the inherent logic evident in La Tourette, and to some degree in the City Hall.
The design and architecture of the building resulted in a
Modernist architectural style known as
Brutalism
Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...
.
This style of architecture was popular with government buildings in the 1970s and 80s.
Situated between Somerset Road and Devonshire Road, Group 2 Architects designed the PUB Building as an H-shaped block with a central
service
Service may refer to:
Activities
* Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty
* Civil service, the body of employees of a government
* Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a pu ...
core and a
naturally-ventilated lobby. Facing north and south, the two parallel wings are of unequal height, and are linked by a wider transverse area three floors in height, and further up by the lift shaft and the access to each floor.
Between the two wings is a landscaped courtyard.
Horizontal emphasis
The architects sought to create an approachable building that reflected the role of the PUB as a
public supplier of gas and electricity, and this led them to choose strong horizontal elements for the design.
In the building's façade, this is achieved with distinctive rows of vertical fins, staggered so as to emphasise horizontal movement; these fins also provide shade.
A secondary horizontal pattern results from grouping two or more rows of these fins in blocks.
The Singapore Power Building's defining architectural motif is its "inverted
ziggurat
A ziggurat (; Cuneiform: 𒅆𒂍𒉪, Akkadian: ', D-stem of ' 'to protrude, to build high', cognate with other Semitic languages like Hebrew ''zaqar'' (זָקַר) 'protrude') is a type of massive structure built in ancient Mesopotamia. It has ...
" façade.
The building tapers from
cantilever
A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a canti ...
ed upper floors to recessed lower floors, and the resulting overhangs help to shade the lower levels, a logical response to the
tropical climate
Tropical climate is the first of the five major climate groups in the Köppen climate classification identified with the letter A. Tropical climates are defined by a monthly average temperature of 18 °C (64.4 °F) or higher in the cool ...
. The tropical setting also led to the provision of a generous shaded
concourse
A concourse is a place where pathways or roads meet, such as in a hotel, a convention center, a railway station, an airport terminal, a hall, or other space.
The term is not limited to places where there are literally pathways or roadways or t ...
at ground level.
It was the combination of design features intended to reflect the climate, together with an objective of making the floor areas congruent with the size of the administrative elements of the utility that occupied them, that resulted in the building's distinctive
structural
A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such a ...
profile.
Internally, the building was organised to reflect the distribution of office spaces required by PUB's departments at the time, with more space needed on the upper floors. The
chamfer
A chamfer or is a transitional edge between two faces of an object. Sometimes defined as a form of bevel, it is often created at a 45° angle between two adjoining right-angled faces.
Chamfers are frequently used in machining, carpentry, fu ...
ed
parapet
A parapet is a barrier that is an extension of the wall at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony, walkway or other structure. The word comes ultimately from the Italian ''parapetto'' (''parare'' 'to cover/defend' and ''petto'' 'chest/breast'). Whe ...
s at the ends soften the corners of the building. The length of the building is emphasised and the design elements are visually integrated by vertical projections housing staircases.
The staggered façade provides views to the exterior, while offering voids in between that afford "breathing space".
The ground floor of the building was dedicated to public access and use for retail as well.
It is entered via wide steps under columns that are three- or four-storeys high,
and these
pilotis
Pilotis, or piers, are supports such as columns, pillars, or stilts that lift a building above ground or water. They are traditionally found in stilt and pole dwellings such as fishermen's huts in Asia and Scandinavia using wood, and in elev ...
create a sense of space for the naturally ventilated public lobby areas.
From the concourse, which is decorated with wall-relief sculptures, steps lead to upper and lower public service areas, a cafeteria and carparks.
The original design of the Singapore Power Building was executed virtually without later alteration although it would later be surrounded by hotels, the
Somerset MRT station
Somerset MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station on the North South Line in Orchard, Singapore. It is one of the three stations located along the popular shopping belt, Orchard Road.
The station connects to Comcentre ...
and shopping complexes.
Structural framework
The structural framework of the building utilises a simple system of
reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
beams and slabs, and was originally clad in square
mosaic
A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...
and rectangular ceramic tiles on its walls and columns.
The building's foundation comprises large diameter
bored pile
In conventional usage, boredom, ennui, or tedium is an emotional and occasionally psychological state experienced when an individual is left without anything in particular to do, is listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occu ...
s installed in decomposed
sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...
. Beams span an average 7.6 metres except at the main entrance where
post-tensioned concrete
Prestressed concrete is a form of concrete used in construction. It is substantially "prestressed" ( compressed) during production, in a manner that strengthens it against tensile forces which will exist when in service. Post-tensioned concreted i ...
beams span 15 metres. The auditorium is roofed over by 24-metre long steel
truss
A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure.
In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...
es with a composite reinforced concrete covering.
Notes
External links
Official Website*
{{Good article
Brutalist architecture in Singapore
Skyscraper office buildings in Singapore
Buildings and structures completed in 1977
Shopping malls in Singapore
Orchard Road
Orchard, Singapore