Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore

Eco-friendly buildings these days are setting themselves apart not only With their environmentally responsible materials, mode of construction, and facilities, but also with their unique looks. Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore is no exception. Completed in April 2016, Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore was designed by WOHA, an architecture firm in Singapore, and described as a “living tower.” In fact, WOHA says that the building “combines innovative ways to intensify land use with a tropical approach that showcases a perforated, permeable, furry, verdant tower of green in the heart of Singapore’s Central Business District (CBD).”

Furry, verdant tower. Who wouldn’t be interested in that kind of building?

The open areas of the building are cooled through cross ventilation. Each floor of the hotel has sky gardens, and the plants in each floor are planted in a way that makes them fairly low maintenance, and they help to cool the building as well. If the plants continue to grow well, then the building could be covered in them in about a year. According to Richard Hassell, cofounder of WOHA, in an interview with Curbed, “Examining the central business districts of so many cities is like looking at the moon from the Earth; one is filled with life, the other is just this collection of dead stone. With Oasia, we’ve seen so many birds and insects flying around the building. People respond so well to seeing a hummingbird flying right outside their office window.”