Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Gateway of Singapore

The Gateway is a building complex comprising two 37-story 150-metre tall office towers on Beach Road in the Downtown Core of Singapore.

The architecture of The Gateway has been described as "world class" by the National Library Board. The buildings were designed by the U.S. based architect, I. M. Pei.The local Singaporean architectural firm that worked on this project was Chua Ka Seng and Partners Chartered Architects (CKSP). T.Y. Lin Structural Engineers from San Francisco also collaborated on the project.

The shape of the buildings is trapezoidal, which is similar to the form used by I. M. Pei in the critically acclaimed National Gallery of Art East Building in Washington, D.C. Locals refer to the buildings as "two towering cardboard boxes".

The Downtown Core is a 266-hectare urban planning area in the south of the city-state of Singapore. The Downtown Core surrounds the mouth of the Singapore River and southeastern portion of its watershed, and is part of the Central Area, Singapore's central business district. It is one of the most dense areas in Singapore, even more than other divisions in the Central Area, to the extent that much of it is filled with skyscrapers.

As its name implies, it forms the economic core of Singapore, including key districts such as Raffles Place and key administrative buildings such as the Parliament House, the Supreme Court and City Hall as well as numerous commercial buildings and cultural landmarks.

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