Refreshing Singapore: The SG50 Masterplan

In 2013, Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority held a competition for the master planning of an area to the north of the Singapore River and Marina Bay. The precinct conspicuously lacked coherence and connectivity, but it did contain the Civic District, the historic administrative precinct laid out according to the Raffles Plan of 1822. The competition was won by a team comprising Cox Architecture, Architects 61, Arup, Context, and Arcadis, and the SG50 masterplan was completed in time to celebrate Singapore’s fifty years of independence in 2015. 

The avowed intention of the SG50 masterplan was to ensure that the precinct became a place for people, to be used by anybody for any reason at any time. The buildings and parks were not restored to former glories for reasons of conservation alone, they were opened out and re-articulated to serve as a gracious – and uniquely Singaporean – setting for communal interaction and personal enjoyment. 

Refreshing Singapore: The SG50 Masterplan documents the design intentions, the urban and historic contexts, and the beautiful new spaces of the completed project.

Written and photographed by Patrick Bingham-Hall

Dimensions: 250 x 330mm (Portrait) Hardback with slipcover

Extent: 116pp

Date of publication: March 2020

ISBN: 978-98144208-8