Marina Bay Sands, Singapore by Safdie Architects

Marina Bay Sands is a $5 billion, high-density, mixed-use integrated resort that brings together a 2,560-room hotel, convention center, shopping and dining, theaters, museum, and a casino across the water from Singapore’s Central Business District. Designed by Boston-based, internationally renowned architect Moshe Safdie for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, the 929,000 square meter (10 million square-foot) urban district anchors the Singapore waterfront, creates a gateway to Singapore, and provides a dynamic setting for a vibrant public life. Moshe Safdie was invited to join the Las Vegas Sands Corporation in developing a competitive design proposal for Marina Bay for submission to the Government of Singapore.

Marina Bay Sands

Design Architect Moshe Safdie“Marina Bay Sands is really more than a building project, it is a microcosm of a city rooted in Singapore’s culture, climate, and contemporary life,” says architect Moshe Safdie. “Our challenge was to create a vital public place at the district-urban scale, in other words, to address the issue of megascale and invent an urban landscape that would work at the human scale.”

Safdie designed an urban structure that weaves together the components of a complex program into a dynamic urban crossroads and public meeting place. Inspired by great ancient cities that were ordered around a vital public thoroughfare, Marina Bay Sands is organized around two principal axes that traverse the district and give it a sense of orientation placing emphasis on the pedestrian street as the focus of civic life. This new urban place integrates the waterfront promenade, a 74,000 square meter (800,000 square-foot) multi-level retail arcade, and the iconic Museum of ArtScience on the promontory. Located along the network of public paths are also two theaters with a combined 4,000 seats, a casino, a 9,000 square meter (96,000 square-foot) convention and exhibition center, and a hydraulically adjustable public event piazza of 5,000 square meters (54,000 square feet). Combining indoor and outdoor spaces and providing a platform for a wide array of activities, this vibrant, 21st-century cardo maximus, or grand arcade, also connects to the subway and other transportation.

A series of layered gardens provide ample green space throughout Marina Bay Sands, extending the tropical garden landscape from Marina City Park towards the Bayfront. The landscape network reinforces urban connections with the resort’s surroundings and every level of the district has green space that is accessible to the public. Generous pedestrian streets open to tropical plantings and water views. Half of the roofs of the hotel, convention center, shopping mall, and casino complex are planted with trees and gardens.

Three 55-storey hotel towers anchor the district and are connected at the top by the 1 hectare (2.5-acre) SkyPark. An engineering marvel 200 meters (656 feet) above the sea, the SkyPark spans from tower to tower and cantilevers 65 meters (213 feet) beyond. It accommodates a public observatory, gardens, a 151 meter-long (495 foot-long) swimming pool, restaurants, and jogging paths and offers sweeping panoramic views, a formidable resource in a dense city like Singapore. Shielded from the winds and lavishly planted with hundreds of trees, the SkyPark celebrates the notion of the Garden City that has been the underpinning of Singapore’s urban design strategy.

Moshe Safdie selected five international artists to create eight monumental public art installations for Marina Bay Sands (James Carpenter, Antony Gormley, Ned Kahn, Sol LeWitt, and Chongbin Zheng). The artists worked closely with Safdie to ensure that the site-specific commissions complement the architecture and energize the public spaces.

Project Includes:

1. Hotel – 2,560 luxury rooms in three hotel towers, totaling 265,683 square meters (2,860,000 square feet)
2. Sands SkyPark – the three hotel towers are connected at the top (200 meters/656 feet) by a 9,941 square meter (107,000 square foot) park that brings together a public observatory, jogging paths, gardens, restaurants, lounges, and an infinity swimming pool
   • This 1.2 hectare (3 acre) tropical oasis is longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall and large enough to park four-and-a-half A380 jumbo jets
   • It spans from tower to tower and cantilevers 65 meters (213 feet) beyond to form one of the world’s largest public cantilevers
   • It is 340 meters (1,115 feet) long from the northern tip to the south end
   • The park’s maximum width is 40 meters (131 feet)
   • The 1,396 square meter (15,026 square foot) swimming pool is the largest outdoor pool at its height and has a 145 meter (475 foot) vanishing edge
   • The entire park can host up to 3,900 people
   • Its lush gardens include 250 trees and 650 plants
3. Casino – the “atrium style” casino features four levels of gaming and entertainment in one space totaling 15,000 square meters (161,500 square feet) with the atrium ceiling holding a 7 ton chandelier with
   132,000 Swarovski crystals and 66,000 LEDs
4. The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands – includes over 74,322 square meters (800,000 square feet) of retail and restaurant space
5. Sands Expo and Convention Center – consists of 121,000 square meters (1.3 million square feet) of flexible convention and exhibition space, including one of the largest ballrooms in Asia with area of 8,000 square meters (86,100 square feet) and the capacity to host 11,000 people
6. Museum of ArtScience – is 15,000 square meters (161,500 square feet square feet) with 6,000 meters (64,580 square feet) of gallery space, a 3,000 square meter (32,290 square foot) lily pond at grade and has a
   palm measuring 80 meters (260 feet) in diameter reaching 62 meters (203 feet) above grade and 11 meters (36 feet) below grade
7. Theaters – the two theaters are 21,980 square meters (236,600 square feet square feet) with a combined 4,000 seats
8. Crystal Pavilions – the 5,914 square meters (63,660 square feet) Crystal Pavilions house shops and nightclubs and are the first glass and steel structures to be set in Marina Bay
9. Event Plaza – is 5,000 square meters (54,000 square foot) and capable of hosting 10,000 people for a diverse range of local and international live performances.

• Location: Singapore
• Client: Marina Bay Sands Pte. Ltd. (A subsidiary of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation)
• Public Openings: June 23, 2010 (Sky Park, hotel, retail, convention center and entertainment venues)
• Fall 2010 (Museum of ArtScience, performing arts theatres)
• Site Area: 154,938 square meters / 15.4 hectare (1,668,000 square feet / 38 acres)
• Gross Floor Area: 581,400 square meters (6,258,000 square feet)
• Total Area: 845,000 square meters (9,096,000 square feet)
• Height : 57 stories / 195 meters (640 feet)
• Total Cost: US $5.7 billion, including land cost

Tags: Singapore

Category: Mixed use

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