WOHA ARCHITECTS

Description

Currently recognized as one of the world’s most innovative and mercurial architectural practices,WOHA began in 1994 with the partnership of Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell. Now Singapore’s (and Southeast Asia’s) best – known architects, they have collected an unprecedented number of international and local awards, reflecting both their regionally – specific understanding and their acknowledgment of 21st century global realities. WOHA’s architecture is constantly evolving, it emerges through a process of discussions and self-critique, so that each project builds upon preceding, concurrent and possible programs …“We are constantly looking for a multivalent abstraction: one that has connections to many things, and operates simultaneously on many levels.” In its built form, WOHA’s architecture resonates with the metaphorical, the abstract, and the literal qualities of its Southeast Asian context, but this local awareness is always intertwined with an exploration of and a reaction to contemporary architecture language. Alongside this relentless pursuit of an architecture of shrewdness, surprise and delight, the implementation of environmental principles has been fundamental to their designs.

WOHA’s fifteen year process has taken them from private houses and conservation projects in Singapore through smaller public and commercial developments to their current Asia – wide range of resorts, hotels, apartment towers and large – scale city buildings. Initial recognition came from the lateral thinking that lay behind the adaptation of a shophouse on Emerald Hill Road and their ‘matrix’ inspired set of three houses at Victoria Park Road. Both these projects were to win international architecture awards. A series of inventive and assured houses – at Maple Avenue, Hua Guan Avenue and Rochalie Drive – were to significantly alter perceptions of Singaporean domestic architecture, as they calmly rejected entrenched notions of vernacular reference and tropical modernism, without employing the generic tricks of the contemporary modernism of affluence. Two projects were then to elevate the architecture of WOHA to another level: 1 Moulmein Rise and the Church of St Mary of the Angels. The former is a high – rise apartment block that represents a genuine ambition to create a tropical skyscraper (and was to win the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007), whilst the latter comprises a wonderfully crafted and uplifting series of buildings and spaces for the Franciscan Church in suburban Singapore. WOHA have subsequently operated in an almost rarefied atmosphere, continually drawing on the success of these projects to produce an array of uniquely individual and contextually aware buildings. Two stations (Bras Basah and Stadium) for Singapore’s MRT railway network create monumental and provocatively phenomenological experiences for commuters, whilst the Newton Suites apartment block constitutes an especially literal and picturesque essay on the potential for ‘green’ architecture in the city. An assortment of projects, which have just reached completion, represent WOHA’s most spectacular projects to date: the organically filigreed Crowne Plaza Hotel at Changi Airport; the dazzlingly ornamental ‘iluma’ entertainment complex and the shimmering wrapping forms of the Wilkie Edge mixed – use development in downtown Singapore; the Balinese ‘next generation’ resort of Alila Villas Uluwatu, which revels in the site’s distinctive beauty rather than degrading it with the trappings of excessive consumption; and The Met, a landmark 66 storey apartment in Bangkok, which continues WOHA’s determination to implement innovative high – rise tropical living.

This book documents all WOHA’s significant projects (built and unbuilt), through photography and detailed formal drawings. Essays are written by Anna Johnson and Leon van Schaik, whilst William Lim and Erwin Viray contribute their own affectionate observations.

400 pages / 26 x 35 cm