Wong Mun Summ
Founding Director | WOHA (Singapore)
Biography
Mun Summ Wong, co-founded the Singapore-based architectural practice WOHA in 1994, he is a Professor in Practice at the National University of Singapore's Department of Architecture and co-directs the Integrated Sustainable Design Masters Studio. He is also appointed to the Seidler Chair in the Practice of Architecture at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He sits on the Nominating Committee of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, the Design Advisory Board of Design Singapore Council as well as a Member of the CTBUH Masters of Tall Building and Vertical Urbanism Advisory Panel.
WOHA projects are living systems that connect to the city as a whole. With every project, the practice aims to create a matrix of interconnected human-scaled environments that foster community, enable stewardship of nature, generate biocentric beauty, activate ecosystem services and build resilience. WOHA apply their systems thinking approach to architecture and urbanism in their building design as well as their regenerative masterplans. WOHA received a iiiiii
number of architectural awards such as the Aga Khan Award for One Moulmein Rise as well as the RIBA Lubetkin Prize and International Highrise Award for The Met in Bangkok. The practice was awarded the CTBUH Urban Habitat and Best Mixed-Use Building and World Architecture Festival World Building of the Year for Kampung Admiralty and CTBUH Best Tall Building Worldwide for the Oasia Hotel Downtown.
Mun Summ is currently leading projects slated for completion, such as BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh (2023), Pan Pacific Orchard (2023), Punggol Digital District and SIT campus in Singapore (2025).
PAST PROJECTS
Photo by: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Photo by: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Photo by: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Photo by: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Oasia Hotel Downtown
A verdant tower of green in the heart of Singapore’s dense Central Business District (CBD), Oasia Hotel Downtown is a prototype of land use intensification for the urban tropics. This tropical “living tower” offers an alternative image to the sleek technology of the genre.
WOHA created a series of different strata of offices, hotel and club rooms, each with its own sky garden. These additional “ground” levels allow generous public areas for recreation and social interaction throughout the high-rise, despite the inner-city high-density location.
Landscaping is used extensively as an architectural surface treatment and forms a major part of the development’s material palette both internally and externally, achieving an overall Green Plot Ratio of 1,100%. The tower’s red aluminum mesh cladding is designed as a backdrop that reveals itself in between 21 different species of creepers. Instead of a flat roof, the skyscraper is crowned with a tropical bower; floral, diverse, soft and alive.