Rising High In The Tropics

Source : TODAY, Wednesday, September 5, 2007

1 Moulmein Rise bags prestigious architecture prize

IT IS not what most would consider an icon of the Lion City, and most Singaporeans would not even be able to identify this building on sight.

But the 28-storey tower in Moulmein is now one of the nine winners of the world’s most pricey architectural prize.

1 Moulmein Rise (picture), designed by local firm Woha Architects, is the first project from Singapore to win the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. The nine winning projects will share the US$500,000 ($764,000) award given once every three years by a network of agencies that seek to improve living conditions in poor countries.

The residential tower’s “innovative techniques and detailing” was lauded by the awards jury as a “creative” take on high-rise living in a tropical climate.

The architects, said the jury citation, had avoided “market-approved cliches” and incorporated the traditional monsoon window — a horizontal opening that lets in the breeze but not rain — to design a product “quite different from the norm in the real estate market”.

Completed in 2003 with a price tag of over US$9 million, 1 Moulmein Rise was developed by the UOL Group.

Said Woha founding director Wong Mun Summ: “We are very honoured to receive such high recognition. We are pleased that Singapore architecture is being recognised on the global stage.

“We hope that this award will encourage others to design sustainable high-rise buildings in Asia.”

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced the winners at a ceremony yesterday at the Petronas Twin Towers, which won the award in 2004.

Other winners include Malaysia’s high-tech University of Technology Petronas; Shibam, a rehabilitated centuries-old city of mud-houses in Yemen; and a public gathering space, the Samir Kassir Square in Beirut, Lebanon.

More than 343 projects were submitted for the Aga Khan Award, which was founded in 1977 to recognise architectural excellence in places where Muslims live.

The award covers the fields of contemporary design, social housing, community improvement, historical preservation, reuse and area conservation, as well as landscape design and improvement of environment.