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The future of Singapore’s public housing lies in supertall megablocks
Pearl’s Hill is a use case for how a land-scarce city can create affordable downtown public housing and catalyse new forms of urban living.
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Developments such as (from left) Pinnacle＠Duxton, SkyVille@Dawson and Pearl’s Hill represent Singapore’s continuing experiment with supertall public housing.
PHOTOS: BRIAN TEO, DESMOND FOO, HDB
When the Government revealed that it was exploring building a 60-storey public housing development at Pearl’s Hill, most of the initial attention fell on the aesthetics: the cascading water features, rooftop gardens, and a silhouette designed to evoke the classical Chinese landscape painting tradition of shan shui hua (山水画).
The project is certainly striking. Connected to Outram MRT station, set against the greenery of Pearl’s Hill City Park and projected to yield about 1,700 Build-To-Order (BTO) flats, the development will become the tallest residential structure in the Outram-Chinatown area, surpassing the nearby private condominium One Pearl Bank’s twin 39-storey towers.
