‘Hotel in nature’: Inside the world’s best new skyscraper

Singapore CNN —

Tropical plants creep up vast structural columns and dangle from ledges, hundreds of feet above the ground. Guests lounge around a lagoon-like swimming pool nestled away from the scorching midday sun. A series of soaring terraces sit within the tower’s frame, like caverns carved into a mountainside.

This is Singapore’s Pan Pacific Orchard, which has just been named the world’s best new tall building by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). Announcing the award in a press release Wednesday, the industry group described the tower as a “hotel in nature” that demonstrated a “groundbreaking approach to high-density urbanism.”

The lagoon-like swimming pool on the building's fifth-floor beach terrace.

Despite the lofty accolades, the lush open-air cavities of the 461-foot-high structure feel surprisingly intimate. “You experience the hotel not as a very big building, but at more of a neighborhood scale,” said architect Hong Wei Phua of WOHA, the Singaporean firm behind the design, as he toured CNN around the site on Thursday.

The unique design comprises a series of L-shaped volumes that divide the tower into four distinct stacks, freeing up space for urban gardens and greenery. Each of the four terraces is based on a different motif relating to Singapore’s tropical environment: forests, beaches, gardens and clouds, in ascending order.

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The ground-level “Forest Terrace,” the only one accessible to passersby, features a cascading water feature and dozens of plant species, many of which are native to the island nation. Phua said it was designed as a public gesture that set the design apart from more