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| ArtScience Museum looks like a lotus hovering above the ground. |
We all know ArtScience Museum is part of the integrated resort, Marina Bay Sands owned by the US Las Vegas Sands Company. It is the first ArtScience Museum in the world. We shall not dwell on what it has to offer but on the architecture structure itself. I had chose this building to be on the last week of this month because I think it represents the future of Singapore. The reasons being, Singapore intends to develop our arts and sciences in the region as well as to draw tourists to Singapore. Singapore had developed Esplanade to offer place for world class performance. National Gallery, which would be opening soon, will feature more on visual arts. ArtScience Museum being the latest icon, besides the Sky Park, in Singapore would naturally be a building that I would blog about. The structure itself is a lovely combination of art and science.
The museum, in fact the whole integrated resort was designed by Mr. Moshe Safdie. When you first look at this building, what do you think of? To me, it looks like a flower. To be exact, it intended to look like lotus. The owner Mr Adelson refers it as a "welcoming hand of Singapore." If you count the petals or fingers, there are 10 of them in total.
To write this blog, it helps that the museum offers free architecture tours in the museum itself during the weekends.
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| Front of the museum - The petals are made from fiber-reinforced polymer. This material is used for construction of boats and yachts. The highest petals reached up to 60 metre |
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| The base of the museum is embedded in the ground surrounded by bay waters and a lily pond. Visitors enters through this glass pavilion. |
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| To access the different levels, visitors has to travel by elevator |
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| The dish like roof collects rainwater and drains through this oculus. |
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| A basket like diagrid supports the lotus together with the 10 columns giving the museum a hovering like appearance. |
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| Rainwater drains through the oculus is collected into the pond (shown above) These water is redirected by pipes to the mesuem's washroom and also to the lily pond. We were being told the black pillars you see in these photos contains the pipes. |
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| Architectural drawing |
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| If you have been to the museum, have you ever wonder why is the air conditioning grills built into the floor instead? This is an eco friendly feature to help cool the air at the visitors height and not the entire space. |
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| From this miniature, you can see this building is indeed 10 petals or fingers |
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| Reflection of the ArtScience museum, noted the tips of the petals are chipped off? That is to allow natural light to flow into the museum. This is another of the Eco move the museum adopted. |
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| Water Lilies |
So does the ArtScience museum look like a lotus to you?If you are interested in the architecture of the museum, you could pop by the musuem over the weekend.
Meeting point: 5 minutes before start of session at the ArtScience Museum lobby
Architectural Adventure (Workshop)
Sunday 5-6pm
Meeting point: 5 minutes before start of session at the ArtScience Museum lobby
Both workshops are free, limit to first 20 participants. I attended the latter with my family.
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This is part of the Architecture and Buildings series for WW.
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