A New Landmark at the Crossroads of Heritage and Modern Living
City Gate is an iconic mixed-use development that redefines city-fringe living. Featuring two interconnected residential towers above a five-storey commercial podium, it has transformed the former office building into a thriving axis for living, retail, and lifestyle.
-
Completed
2018
-
Location
Bugis, Singapore
-
Total Floor Area
36,345 sqm
-
Retail Floor Area
28,737 sqm
-
No. of Residential Units
331 units
-
Client
Bayfront Ventures Pte Ltd
City Gate won the Award of Excellence in the Best Tall Mixed-Use Building category at the 2022 Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) Awards.
-
Design Intent
Located at an urban-heritage threshold between the Central Business District and historic Kampong Gelam, City Gate departs from the conventional rectilinear glass-and-concrete skyscraper typology. A detailed, wave-like modular façade wraps around its podium, introducing a finer-grained texture that matches the scale of the surrounding shophouses. These waves create apertures with glimpses of dining and retail activities inside, while gently rounding off the corners to ease the solid form into the streetscape.
-
Continuing the theme of “motion in nature”, the graceful flowing lines of the aluminum podium façade take the form of thin concrete solar protection at every residential floor of the tower, giving the integrated development a slender profile.
-
Communal decks exclusive to residents on the 6th and 24th storeys provide lush, private sanctuaries that insulate them from the bustle of the podium below.
Form in Focus
- 16 sky terraces punctuate the 25-storey tower, mitigating its imposing scale. They are staggered on alternating planes, allowing a visual dialogue and social moments between residents on different floors.
- The L-shaped tower layout maximises views of the culturally-rich neighbourhood and sweeping vistas beyond, while offering dynamic elevations of the urban marker when viewed from different points across the city.
Studio Dialogue
with Charles Arnal, Director, SAA Architects
Lead Designer for City Gate
City Gate is situated in a culturally-rich area. How did the site’s heritage inform your conceptual framework of the design?
Located along Beach Road and right next to the Kampong Gelam conservation district, City Gate sits in a site steeped in history yet poised for urban transformation. Rather than competing with the heritage landmarks that define the precinct, the design draws inspiration from the surrounding architectural language and reinterprets it through a contemporary lens, creating a bold urban marker that enters into a quiet dialogue with its storied context.
Were any adaptations made to City Gate to fit the locale?
City Gate adopted a fluid, curvilinear form with an undulating façade that expands and contracts, creating a shifting silhouette that lends the building a dynamic, living quality.
“To visually anchor it at the intersection of Jalan Sultan and Beach Road, azure blue accents were traced along the perimeter of the retail podium, framing it as a striking gateway to the Central Business District.”
A perforated metal veil, resembling a field of silver stars, was meticulously wrapped around the podium block to integrate the car park on the upper floors into the overall architectural language.
How did you ensure vibrancy for the retail units and privacy for residents?
We started with a distinct spatial separation between the residential and commercial zones. The podium, which houses retail and F&B units, opens to the main pedestrian thoroughfare along Beach Road and Jalan Sultan to activate the frontage and draw footfall.
Above this lively base, we created a separate ground plane on Level Six for the two 25-storey residential towers, accessed through a private lift lobby. Our intent was to create an urban cocoon, where the vibrancy of city life coexists with the calm of a residential sanctuary.
