Bukit Canberra

Bukit Canberra is a large-scale community, sports and lifestyle development built on a greenfield site of nearly 12 hectares in Sembawang that has a national monument at its highest point. The design challenge is to insert the extensive programmes required of a sports and community hub that serves the Sembawang residents, while preserving the site’s hilly terrain and forest quality, and honouring the heritage of the Former Admiralty House, renamed as Canberra House. The project afforded an opportunity to design a living building that is not only inspired by nature but merges and thrives with it. Adopting regenerative-design principles, the design regards the environment as an equal stakeholder and focuses on establishing harmony between social and ecological systems for long-term resilience, development and growth. Capitalising on the existing forest ecology, Bukit Canberra adopts a master plan that prioritises biodiversity and conceives a landscape network that serves as a binding system to connect the different spaces, amenities and users within the sprawling development. The project employs a range of environmentally sensitive and people-focused design strategies, and productive building practices from design to construction. The result is a better-than-sustainable project that progresses towards a regenerative urban ecology, where the built environment seamlessly blends with the natural surroundings. Bukit Canberra demonstrates a keen sensitivity to the interconnectedness of social, ecological and wellbeing factors, skilfully addressing the existing landscape, the built heritage and the needs of the community.