Parkview Square

Parkview Square is an office building located in the Downtown Core Planning Area, Central Region, Singapore. It is situated along North Bridge Road, and is near the major commercial hub at Marina Centre. It is next to Bugis MRT station, Bugis Junction, and The Gateway, and straddles the Rochor Road and Ophir Road corridor.

Parkview Square
百威广场
General information
TypeCommercial offices
Architectural stylePostmodern / Neo Art Deco / New Classical
LocationNorth Bridge Road, Downtown Core, Singapore
Coordinates1°18′0.5″N 103°51′27.48″E
Construction started1999
Completed2002
OwnerChyau Fwu Development
ManagementChyau Fwu Development
Height
Roof144 m (472 ft)
Technical details
Floor count24
2 basements
Floor area39,145 m2 (421,350 sq ft)
Lifts/elevators11
Design and construction
ArchitectDP Architects
DeveloperChyau Fwu Development
Website
www.ParkviewSquare.com
References
[1][2][3][4]

Parkview Square is one of the most expensive office buildings in Singapore..

Parkview Square houses the Honorary Consulate of Oman on the 4th floor, Embassy of the United Arab Emirates[5] on the 9th floor, as well as the embassies of Austria and Mongolia on the 24th floor of the building.,[6][7]

The third floor is entirely occupied by the Parkview Museum where international contemporary art exhibitions are presented every year. [8]

Design and architecture

Parkview Square was designed by the US firm James Adams Design, together with DP Architects of Singapore. It was the last major project by the late C. S. Hwang, a Taiwanese tycoon, who was the founder and chairman of Chyau Fwu Group.

The office space on each floor is column-less so it can be reconfigured according to the tenant's wish. Although it is a modern building, having been completed in 2002, it is designed in the classic Art Deco style, inspired by New York City's 1929 Chanin Building. The exterior surface of the building is clad in brown granite, bronze, lacquer, and glass.

The lobby is also designed in the Art Deco style and features a 15m-high ceiling with hand-crafted details. The bar in the lobby of the building has a unique 3-storey gin tower housing over a thousand gins. The tower used to hold a wine chiller from which a female bartender dressed as a fairy would retrieve bottles on request by means of a flying wire apparatus.

The open plaza of Parkview Square is reminiscent of Piazza San Marco in Venice with sculptures and statues surrounding the open plaza. There are many bronze effigies of some of the most famous figures in world history, including Sun Yat-sen, Abraham Lincoln, Salvador Dalí, Mozart, Chopin, Isaac Newton, Pablo Picasso, Rembrandt, Shakespeare, Plato, Dante, Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein.

The building has widespread use of motifs, sculptures, and ornamentation. The building is guarded by eight gigantic fiberglass statues of men holding a light ball in their hands, four of them standing on each broad side of the building's crown. Gargoyles, which are said to be hand-crafted, decorate the building’s exterior.

Locally, the building is often referred to as the Gotham building, due to its Art Deco architectural style that resembles the fictional Gotham City from the Batman series.

Golden crane statue
Signature crane sculpture at Parkview Square

In the center of the plaza is a statue of a golden crane with its head lifted, pointing towards the direction of Mainland China, its wings in pre-flight mode. On the pedestal, a Chinese poem is written:

黄鹤楼

故国旧有黄鹤楼
北望神州几千秋
黄鹤展翅飞万里
伟哉狮城见鹤楼

The poem refers to a mythical crane looking towards the direction of its temple (a place of worship in Hubei, China) and eager to fly the thousands of miles back — Depicting the homesickness of the owner. The poem also appears as an Easter egg in Original illustration of the Chinese version of StarCraft 2.[9]

The statue is supposed to bring wealth to the building.

  • Close up view
  • Shot from a distance
  • Parkview Square seen from DHL Balloon
  • The skyscraper in December 2005

References
  1. "Parkview Square". CTBUH Skyscraper Center.
  2. Parkview Square at Emporis
  3. "Parkview Square". SkyscraperPage.
  4. Parkview Square at Structurae
  5. "Embassy of UAE in Singapore". Archived from the original on 2013-04-09.
  6. "Embassy of Mongolia in Singapore". Archived from the original on 2012-05-11.
  7. "Österreichische Vertretungsbehörden". Archived from the original on 2013-04-10.
  8. "parkview-museum". parkview-museum. Retrieved 2018-03-17.
  9. "星际2官网更新三张原画 废墟中惊现"黄鹤楼"". tgbus.com. Archived from the original on 25 April 2012. Retrieved 21 November 2011.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.