Rudolph’s design still stands today as The Concourse, a mixed-use development opposite Nicoll Highway MRT Station; while Pei’s work lives on in the OCBC Centre, Raffles City and The Gateway.
“They designed specifically in response to this climate, but they still were able to do very, very bold, innovative structures and architecture that were unique and were one of a kind,” Polisano tells City & Country.
In the “past 20 years or so”, however, many architects have come here and “transplanted the language that they used in New York or Shanghai” into a site in Singapore, adds Polisano. “While [these buildings] might be ‘handsome’ and have some trees on them, most of their physical properties don’t absorb heat. Most of them contribute to an urban heat island effect, as opposed to helping to ameliorate it; most of them are very closed and insular buildings that have ignored placemaking.”
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Hence, Polisano’s firm has been “so careful” about taking on projects here. PLP Architecture marked its maiden foray into Singapore with Park Nova, the ultra-luxury residential development unveiled by Hong Kong’s Shun Tak Holdings in 2021.
Located at the corner of Tomlinson Road and Orchard Boulevard, the 21-storey, 54-unit Park Nova has been lauded for its biophilic design. With just three units on each floor looking away from one another, residents enjoy both privacy and a distinct view of the east, south or northwest.
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PLP Architecture marked its maiden foray into Singapore with Park Nova, the ultra-luxury residential development unveiled by Hong Kong’s Shun Tak Holdings in 2021
“We created this story of blending luxury with comfort — a design strategy that allowed you to extend the life of outdoor spaces and biophilic design and all those sorts of things,” says Polisano. “I’d like to think it was successful; it’s quite a different building for Singapore.”
According to Polisano, the firm is applying lessons learned from the Park Nova project to its other ongoing projects. “We’re not trying to repeat them, but trying to iterate or build off of them.”
Since starting with one employee here in 2022, PLP Architecture has grown to a team of six in Singapore. “They work on the projects when we are on site,” says Tina Qiu, director at PLP Architecture.
Like Polisano, Qiu is also based in London. “We are involved in artistic supervision of our project[s], and our colleagues keep a close eye on that.”
“I would imagine those six people will become 10 or 12 before the end of this year,” says Polisano. “And then even more, hopefully by the end of 2027, as we really have taken the decision to build a Southeast Asian hub here in Singapore.”
Redeveloping Clifford Centre
Singapore will soon see more of PLP Architecture’s designs on its skyline; the firm is designing Clifford Centre for Singapore Land (SingLand).
Built in 1977, the 29-storey retail and office building was torn down in 2023. Replacing it come 2028 is The Clifford, which will stand nearly twice as tall as its 117m predecessor, at 220m.
The now-demolished Clifford Centre, as seen in 2021
As the first newbuild in the area since CapitaSpring, The Clifford will boast 405,000 sq ft of net lettable area (NLA) across 35 floors of office, retail and F&B space — 46% higher than Clifford Centre. The tower will deliver 360,000 sq ft of premium Grade-A office space across 21 floors, complemented by 45,000 sq ft of retail and F&B offerings.
In addition, a 2,000 sq ft multi-purpose hall on level three will offer tenants a venue to host meetings, conferences and events.
SingLand is using the top floor of the refurbished Singapore Land Tower (which it also owns) as a show space for The Clifford as both towers have a similar bay view. SingLand expects unblocked views of Marina Bay for years to come; The Clifford overlooks Clifford Pier, which enjoys conservation status.
“The [original building] was okay as an office building. I always felt it didn’t do much to enhance the character of Raffles Place,” says Polisano. “This building makes a big effort, architecturally and spatially, to engage with the square.”
He says The Clifford will be a “much taller, more prominent building” with “its rightful place” in Singapore’s skyline.
The Clifford will feature two sky terraces located at levels six and 17 of the tower. There are also two “amenity boxes” on levels seven and 18, each measuring about 7,000 sq ft. These could be leased out to gym operators or financial institutions as lounge space.
“A notable architectural feature is the use of cross-laminated timber within ‘floating boxes’ on these terraces. The timber not only reduces embodied carbon but also creates a warmer environment that contrasts with the surrounding glass and steel of the CBD skyline,” says Qiu. “The goal is to provide spaces where tenants can step out of their offices and engage in more relaxed, social activities without leaving the building.”
Traditionally, many CBD office buildings are active only during working hours, notes Qiu. “With The Clifford, the goal was to create a building that remains lively throughout the day and into the evening, [and] even on weekends.”
This “hospitality-led approach” means the retail, F&B and wellness components are not just tenant amenities, says Qiu. “For example, the ground-level podium extends the greenery of Raffles Place Park into the building and is designed to welcome the wider public, including nearby office workers and visitors to the area… By layering these experiences from street level to the sky terraces, the building contributes to a more vibrant CBD rather than functioning as a single-purpose office block.”
This element of vibrancy separates investors who are simply leasing an office building for rental income and asset-owners who want a popular, in-demand destination. “We see all over the world that that pushes the price of rents up because it allows you to offer your tenants — and allows them to offer their employees — a variety of other things to do in the building, rather than find them elsewhere,” says Polisano.
The suite of amenities built into the office itself is an advantage in the war for talent. “People are always offering their employees different perks outside of a desk: access to health and fitness services and other types of things,” adds Polisano. “This building allows SingLand to offer its tenants an attractive menu of services and facilities that could appeal to their employees as well.”
The site itself is “quite a unique piece of real estate”, he notes, “at 110 metres long and only 30 metres wide”. “With the MRT below ground, it’s a natural nexus point where lots of things can potentially come together.”
Raffles Place MRT Station has 13 designated exits, and many commuters hardly consider the facade of the buildings they pass by on the way to work. “Of course, you could pass through this and never even know you were there, or you could enter into a world where you would want to spend time and enjoy things,” adds Polisano.
When completed, The Clifford will have a direct underground connection to Raffles Place MRT Station and access to the Marina Bay waterfront via OUE Link, a second-storey link bridge.
The buildings located directly above Raffles Place MRT Station could change further in the coming years. OUE REIT and United Overseas Bank — the owners of One Raffles Place — have announced they are gauging market interest for the office and retail asset, valued at some $2.4 billion.
Singaporeans may note some similarities between the new Clifford Centre and the completed Singapore Land Tower — “a nod to SingLand and [parent] UOL’s legacy in Raffles Place”, according to Qiu. “You’ll find a similar dedication to the sustainability and the wellness factors to tenants in that building.”
On the sustainability front, The Clifford will be the first commercial office building in Raffles Place to attain triple Platinum certifications from the Building and Construction Authority’s (BCA) Green Mark, LEED (also known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and International WELL Building Institute.
For BCA’s Green Mark Platinum certification, The Clifford is expected to attain the higher rating of Super Low Energy, as it will achieve more than 40% energy savings compared with typical office developments.
Working with SingLand
PLP Architecture’s designs for Clifford Centre are informed in part by the client’s leader. “SingLand is being led by a very young and dynamic person at the moment, and he really has a specific agenda on what he would like to see, the buildings that they’re developing, and the assets that they’re enhancing,” says Polisano. “There’s a big civic part to that — how you bring people together and mix uses and things like that. So in a way, we’re reacting and responding to his mandate.”
SingLand CEO Jonathan Eu has been at the helm for over four years. He joined as chief operating officer in 2020 from UOL, where he had spent a decade. Under Eu, SingLand rebranded itself from United Industrial Corporation (UIC) in 2021 and announced major redevelopments.
Thinly-traded SingLand is UOL’s 50.37%-owned subsidiary. JG Summit Holdings, one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines, is the second-largest shareholder, with a 37.05% stake.
As announced in December 2025, SingLand is leading the redevelopment of the Marina Square complex. It plans to create “Singapore’s first hyper-mixed development” by adding a residential tower, a serviced apartment block and a mixed-use tower.
The Marina Square complex comprises Marina Square shopping mall and three hotels: Pan Pacific Singapore, Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay and Mandarin Oriental. The total site area stretches over some 92,197.3 sqm.
The complex is a 99-year leasehold mixed-use development with about 54 years remaining on the lease. Marina Square shopping mall, opened in 1986, is a five-storey retail mall with NLA of 0.8 million sq ft and was valued at $1.05 billion as at end-2025.
The residential component will yield 702 residential units, according to PropNex’s co-founder and executive chairman Ismail Gafoor. While UOL and SingLand have yet to reveal more information about the Marina Square complex since their initial announcement in December 2025, PropNex’s slides for its financial results for FY2025 ended Dec 31, 2025 mention a residential launch at the Raffles Boulevard address in 4Q2026.
According to Gafoor, the developer is keen to launch the residential component of the Marina Square complex within the year.
Given PLP Architecture’s existing relationship with SingLand, could the firm be called upon to redevelop possibly its largest project here? While both Polisano and Qiu decline to comment, SingLand has promised further updates within 1H2026.
Designing for Singapore
The relationship between PLP Architecture and the UOL Group stretches back more than a decade, when the Singapore-listed developer engaged the architecture firm for One Bishopsgate Plaza, a 42-storey integrated development that houses the first Pan Pacific hotel in the UK and the 160-unit The Sky Residences luxury apartments.
Pan Pacific London opened in September 2021. The Pan Pacific Hotels Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of UOL.
When designing for the two cities, the biggest contrast is climate, says Polisano. “In London, you can create large-scale public spaces, line the edges with activities and curate a lot of events inside.
Even when it’s slightly raining, the temperature never gets that cold or never gets that hot; you can activate these spaces quite successfully, eight to 10 months out of the year.”
Doing that in Singapore is more complicated, he adds. “You can’t really do that without understanding what you’re asking people to do by committing to being outdoors.”
Comfort is a key consideration when placemaking in Singapore, says Polisano. “If you’re going to create places here, you need to assume that they need to be sheltered… Landscape, coverage, shelter, passive ways of making them feel comfortable, to extend their life — that’s a big factor in the whole strategy of how you make [places] successful, otherwise no one’s going to use them.”
Designing for Singapore’s tropical weather extends into choice of materials and even how a building’s inhabitants view the outdoors.
“These new glassy buildings — it’s a trend and I’m not against it or anything,” says Qiu. “But now, you’re sitting in this space — you can tell it’s sunny outside, right? But can you see the sun? You can’t because the glass is tinted so heavily to counteract the solar glare that you end up seeing this kind of grey sky… This perception of a grey sky really affects your mood. Light is important; when you don’t utilise light in the right way, then the building isn’t suited to the location.”
Whether for heritage reasons or sustainability considerations, redeveloping a building today involves a lighter touch.
27 Savile Row, an ongoing project by PLP Architecture in London’s famed street for top-end tailoring, looks to introduce 6,000 sqm of Grade-A office space, a destination restaurant and extensive public realm enhancements.
“We’re proposing to take off the existing stone, treat them, cut them to a different size and proportion, and reclad that back onto the new building,” says Qiu. “It’s retaining the legacy of the place and also saving material because facade dressing of a building is 40% of the carbon that goes into building a building, so that 40% is not extracted again and used from existing materials.”
In fact, PLP Architecture is recycling “probably 80% of all the demolished material” on that project, says Polisano.
Being “sympathetic” to the designs of the original architect behind buildings slated for redevelopment has helped PLP Architecture make a name for itself in the UK, says Qiu. “We study the architects who built these buildings to really understand the integral nature of how they thought about it, so that when we work around that site — either to make alterations or additions to it — we are sympathetic to it… That is a quality that we hope to bring to any project in Singapore.”
Photos: Albert Chua/The Edge Singapore, PLP Architecture, Studio Periphery, Binyan, Jack Hardy
Also in this issue:
New launches in 4Q2026 at Marina Square, Valley Point sites: PropNex
HSBC opens largest wealth centre and first sky lounge at Singapore Land Tower
Read more about Marina Square:
Who stands to gain from SingLand’s Marina Square redevelopment?
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