SOCIAL MEDIA ZEITGEIST

Singapore is turning a 1980s megacomplex into a new piece of city without first demolishing it. SingLand has appointed London-based PLP Architecture as precinct masterplanner and lead designer, working with DP Architects, to reshape the 9.2-hectare Marina Square complex around much of its existing structure.

The redevelopment will provide approximately 362,500m² of gross floor area. Three new buildings will introduce 204 homes in a 49-storey residential tower, a 19-storey hotel and office building, and a 24-storey serviced apartment block. The existing Pan Pacific Singapore, PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay and Mandarin Oriental Singapore hotels will remain operational throughout construction.

PLP Architecture and DP Architects

The four-storey shopping centre will close in March 2027, with completion of the wider project expected in 2031. Rather than replacing the mall, however, the architects plan to retain a significant part of its structure and recast it as the connective centre of the enlarged precinct.

Marina Square is not simply a retrofit or a redevelopment, but an attempt to practise adaptive reuse at the scale of an urban district.

New circulation will connect the existing hotels and proposed towers with landscaped interiors, roof terraces and an elevated botanical loop. The plans also include a 6,500m² public park above Stamford Canal, more than 4,000m² of privately owned public space, and new cultural, events, sports and wellness facilities.

The project has been enabled through Singapore’s Strategic Development Incentive scheme. Introduced by the Urban Redevelopment Authority in 2019, the programme allows departures from established controls governing floor area, land use and height where proposals can demonstrate wider benefits for their surrounding precincts. Marina Square received written permission under the scheme on 31 August 2026.

PLP Architecture and DP Architects

This makes planning policy an active generator of architectural work rather than simply a regulatory framework. Additional development capacity is exchanged for better connections, public space, environmental improvements and a more substantial reconsideration of an ageing asset. Recent revisions to the scheme also require applicants to examine adaptive reuse and compare the carbon implications of different development scenarios.

The commission shows how incentives for intensification can make the retention of existing structures central to a project’s development value.

Marina Square will remain a highly complex construction exercise, combining partial closure with three operating hotels and new buildings inserted around an established commercial structure. Yet it points towards a wider opportunity. In mature, land-constrained Asian cities, major commissions may increasingly emerge from assembling, intensifying and repositioning what already exists. The practices best placed to secure them will need to combine retrofit knowledge with masterplanning, development strategy and the choreography of live urban sites.

Further information
SingLand project announcement
URA Strategic Development Incentive scheme
The Edge Singapore project report