National Gallery Singapore

A simple but strong landscape for commanding architecture, echoes the classical style

The distinctly classical-styled Supreme Court and City Hall, both colonial-era buildings, are now blended together to make the National Gallery. There have always been Royal Palms along the street frontage. The tradition has been kept, with new and younger, but very tall palms, along with a crisp edge of low hedges, retaining the formal composition within the sidewalks and up to the street.

The roof top is where a new landscape thrives under the open sky, wrapping round the huge skylight that illuminates the interior. The upper level has restaurants and bars that look out across the Padang and its sports pitches, and further out to the sea. Guests can walk through the gardens and past the pools to reach their venues and lookout points.

At the back side of the roof garden the Mechanical and Electrical installations are well screened by a dense Green Wall which stretches the full length of the building. There is a theme of using native plants on the roof, not to make this a manicured garden but one that may have grown there on its own.

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