The Scotts Tower, designed by UNStudio, is to bring the developing typology of city/tower to Singapore’s skyline. The residential tower is in no way a new concept. But how we understand these massive ‘people storage devices’ is.. as massive ‘people storage devices’ with homogeneity and uniformity of layout. They are a tower and there are apartments and value engineering rules the day.
Courtesy of UNStudio
However, in UNStudio’s proposal, the tower is broken into neighborhoods- City Loft, City View, Park View and the Penthouses. City Loft is the largest constituency, with 128 residences. These share levels 1-16 with the first 40 City View units. Above these are the second 40 City View units and the 20 units over five floors of the Park View units. Crowning the whole shabang is a single, top floor with three exclusive penthouses.
With the ever growing need for housing and greater density, towers seem to have a definite place in the future of architecture and living. Let us hope that this tower is built and that it acts as an example for projects to come. After all, it’s far more enjoyable to live in a neighborhood than a matrix. Below is a further description of the project, by the architects.
Courtesy of UNStudio
Singapore, 2010
The 18,500m2, 31-storey, 231-unit tower consists of 1 to 3-bedroom apartments and 4-bedroom penthouses; expansive landscaped gardens, sky terraces, penthouse roof gardens and diverse recreational facilities.The concept of The Scotts Tower is that of a vertical city incorporating a variety of residence types and scales. In addition, outdoor green areas in the form of sky terraces, penthouse roof gardens and individual terraces form an important element of the design. The vertical city concept is interpreted on the tower in three scales; the “city”, the “neighborhood” and the “home”. The three elements of the vertical city concept along with the green areas are bound together by two gestures: the “vertical frame” and the “sky frames”.
The vertical frame organizes the tower architecturally in an urban manner. The frame affords the tower the vertical city effect by dividing the four residential clusters into different neighborhoods 
The sky frames – at the lobby (Level 1 & Level 2) and sky terrace (Level 25) – organize the amenity spaces and green areas of the tower.
Courtesy of UNStudio
