THAT slim and stylish Newton Suites building that you have been passing on the way to Newton Food Centre is among the world’s top five highrise buildings.
Designed by Singapore architecture firm Woha, it has been shortlisted for the International Highrise Award.
The other four contenders are New York’s Hearst Tower (New York) by Foster and Partners, New York Times Building by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Seoul’s Missing Matrix Building by Mass Studies and Beijing’s Television Cultural Centre by Office for Metropolitan Architecture.
The prestigious award is the equivalent of the Oscars in the architecture world for highrise buildings, and one of only two global highrise awards. The other one is The Emporis Skyscraper Awards.
For the International Highrise Award, an international jury of architects, engineers, real-estate specialists and architecture critics selected the five finalists from 26 nominated projects from 11 countries.
The winner will get a prize money of 50,000 euros (S$106,700) at the award ceremony to be held on Nov 14 at Frankfurt Paulskirche, a church in Frankfurt.
The award is offered every two years by the City of Frankfurt, and is jointly curated by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum DAM, an architecture museum in Frankfurt, and Dekabank, the German’s Savings Bank Finance Group’s central asset manager.
In selecting the winner, the jury is looking for a building that stands out in its appearance, design, urban integration, sustainability, technology and cost-effectiveness.
Being shortlisted is a huge achievement for Woha, said its director Wong Mun Summ. ‘Three of the selected projects are by Pritzker Prize-winning architects and the other is Korea’s most prominent architect. While we hope we will win, being selected alongside these people is a huge achievement for Singapore.’
The Pritzker Prize is the equivalent of the Nobel prize in architecture. Past winners include British Norman Foster from Foster and Partners, Italian Renzo Piano from Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Dutch Rem Koolhaas from Office for Metropolitan Architecture.
This piece of good news comes after its noteworthy silver award win in the other global highrise award, The Emporis Skyscraper Awards, presented by Emporis, the world’s largest free-to-use website about buildings.
In the eighth annual Emporis awards earlier this year, Newton Suites took second place out of a worldwide pool of 634 eligible skyscrapers.
It was not Woha which nominated the building for the award.
‘The competition’s organisers told us that the project had been nominated and asked us to submit information. We never found out who nominated it,’ said Mr Richard Hassel, another Woha director. ‘We suspect it was due to the attention Newton Suites got from the silver award given by Emporis.’
For the jury, Newton Suites stood out as a model for eco-friendly living in the tropics. Clad in metal mesh sunshading, the 36-storey tower features sky gardens and a 30-storey wall of creepers.
The jury citation noted that it is a ‘pioneering model for other tropical cities’.
Pit against these giants, what does Woha think of its chances of winning?
Mr Hassel said: ‘All the five buildings are very good and are different in terms of use, climate and urban
conditions, so it is quite hard to compare them. Just being in the top five is already as good as winning for us.
‘If we win, it would be an added bonus.’
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