The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), which is the leading authority on skyscrapers, has named Pan Pacific Orchard the Best Tall Building Worldwide for 2024. The prestigious prize was awarded thanks to the building’s ambitious “hotel in nature” concept that makes great use of greenery to offer a cool and comfortable environment in tropical Singapore.
Rising to a height of 140.4 m (461 ft), Pan Pacific Orchard, by WOHA, takes the form of a rectangle, with 35 floors and 347 rooms. Its front-facing facade is arranged into four huge open-air terraces, each of which is filled with plants and trees and has its own name and theme.
The ground floor Forest Terrace contains a cascading water plaza and lots of trees. The Beach Terrace above is conceived as a lush oasis with a lagoon, a sandy beachfront and palm groves. Farther up, the Garden Terrace contains the hotel’s bar and lounge, plus a manicured garden with reflection pools and planter beds. Finally, the uppermost Cloud Terrace hosts a landscaped events plaza alongside a ballroom, a function room, planters and reflection pools.
These open areas are linked to the interior of the hotel, ensuring daylight and ventilation permeate deep within and helping to take the sting out of the tropical climate for hotel guests.
Darren Soh
“The project departs from conventional tower designs by carving out large open-air atria that not only reduce the building’s environmental footprint but also foster interaction between nature, the city and its many diverse communities,” explains CTBUH’s press release. “Its semi-outdoor tropical climate reduces reliance on mechanical cooling systems, while its 45 percent external to 55 percent internal surface area ratio optimizes energy efficiency. These features align with Singapore’s broader sustainability goals and reflect a global push to lower the environmental impact of dense urban environments.”
In addition to all its greenery and focus on ventilation, Pan Pacific Orchard features solar panels which reduce its draw on the grid, as well as rainwater collection for irrigation, while food waste is also processed on-site.
Pan Pacific Orchard also won CTBUH’s Best Tall Building 100 – 199 meters Category Award and the Space Within Category Award. The latter recognizes tall building projects that have integrated extraordinary interior spaces and demonstrate exceptional functional success in terms of the user experience.
Source: CTBUH
