WOHA is a Singapore-based architecture practice, founded in 1994 by Wong Mun

Summ (born 18 August 1962) and Richard Hassell (born 28 October 1966). In 1989,
Wong graduated from the National University of Singapore and Hassell graduated from
the University of Western Australia. Both were then employed by Kerry Hill Architects in
Singapore, where they realized that they shared a logical approach to solving
architectural problems, determined by the requirements of a buildings program rather
than by the form-making opportunities.
In their early years of practice, the partnership became well known throughout
Southeast Asia for their crisply detailed houses in Singapore. In 2000, when the
partnership won the open competitions for two MRT railway stations in Singapore and
the commission for the 1 Moulmein Rise,[1] apartment block, they decided to focus on
public and commercial architecture rather than houses. Their unsuccessful entry to the
Duxton Plain Public Housing competition[2] in 2001 was a groundbreaking scheme,
which comprised nine forty-storey towers, separated by large vertical spaces and linked
by sky streets on every fifth level. By opening up the elements of the building and
creating natural ventilation, WOHA were proposing a new model for tropical architecture
and a passive, structural solution to the problems of sustainability. These ideas were
subsequently adapted to a series of completed apartment towers and public buildings,
notably Newton Suites and the School of the Arts in Singapore, and The Met and
Hansar in Bangkok. These high-rise projects appear as monumental expressions of
their structural functions, and demonstrate a sustainable alternative to generic glassclad towers. Greenery is used extensively as a protective second skin on the faades of
the buildings, particularly as walls of hanging vines. When The Met won the RIBA
Lubetkin Prize in 2011,[3] the jury citation stated: The Met shows that an alternative
strategy to the sleek air-conditioned box can work in the tropics and has implications
everywhere.
Working in the city is central to WOHAs architecture, and apart from occasional resort
commissions, the practice is preoccupied with public buildings and
condominiums/apartments, which are clearly calibrated to perform as part of the public
realm of the city. They have deliberately attempted to restore a democratic spirit to the
inner city of Singapore with projects such as the School of the Arts, iluma, Wilkie Edge

and ParkRoyal on Pickering. Wong and Hassell observe of Singapore: Many of the
existing buildings do not connect successfully, and we wanted to implement an active
permeable ground level. A city is only interesting when you can continually access what
you are walking past, and a lot of Singapore buildings do not attempt this
permeability. Both the Bras Basah and Stadium MRT Stations in central Singapore
were ingenious, though remarkably straightforward, urban design solutions. Set beneath
a thin water-covered glass roof, the Bras Basah Station cannot be seen at ground level,
thus preserving views of the surrounding colonial-era buildings, but nonetheless
constitutes a monumental piece of architecture. Sunlight pours into the station through
the glass roof, bounces off a huge canted limestone wall to the low-lying platforms, and
the nominally subterranean space has become one of Singapores great urban
experiences. The Stadium Station takes the form of a canyon clad in finely ribbed
aluminium, set between a straight wall and a convex wall, with the deep platform level lit
from above through a long crescent-shaped skylight.
Many projects directly explored the aesthetic possibilities of designing in the tropics,
where colourful decoration and expressive geometries reflect the landscape, the foliage
and the local building traditions. Resembling giant orchids in bloom, the exterior of the
Crowne Plaza Hotel at Changi Airport is screened by intertwining polymer-gypsum
ribbons, while the iluma shopping mall in downtown Singapore features a curvaceous
faade studded with shimmering faceted hexagonal panels: a pattern WOHA describe
as a crystal mesh. Several projects, such as the Church of St Mary of the Angels in
Singapore, the Alila Villas Uluwatu resort in Bali, and the InterContinental Sanya Resort
in China, were holistic designs as WOHA were responsible for the site planning,
architecture, landscape, interiors, furniture and lighting. At Alila Villas Uluwatu, unusual
for a Balinese resort as it did not directly mimic the local vernacular, WOHA built a
monumental complex of white stone colonnades edged by water gardens. The
landscape and the buildings combine to create a magnificent architecturally erudite folly,
inspired by Wong and Hassell imagining a meeting between Mies van der Rohe, Carlo
Scarpa and a Majapahit emperor.
Two tower projects under construction in central Singapore, Oasia Downtown and
ParkRoyal on Pickering, comprise dramatic statements in vertical landscaping,

suggesting a city where the architectural forms will virtually disappear behind the
greenery. WOHA have large apartment complexes underway in Mumbai, Guangzhou
and Taipei, which extend the ideas of their earlier schemes where the blocks and
elements were pulled apart to create spaces for shade and ventilation. WOHA are also
intent upon re-establishing the social spaces in Asian cities that disappeared in rapid
recent modernization, and their recent projects and competition entries include large
sheltered naturally-ventilated spaces as a fundamental component of their buildings.