Connect@Changi

Connect @ Changi is the world’s first quarantine-free bubble facility for international business travelers. It has been designed and built to allow business travelers to come to Singapore and conduct business meetings, with residents and/or with other international counterparts within a covid-safe environment. In doing the project is supporting the progressive reopening of Singapore’s borders to bring back vigour to its economic activities The project is located at Singapore Expo and makes efficient use of the large column-free volume of the existing convention halls to repurpose them and erect the two-storeyed facility inside each hall. Speed was imperative to this project and thus a modular design strategy was adopted. Each guestroom is a modular PPVC unit (prefabricated pre-finished volumetric construction) which was fabricated complete with many of the interior fit outs and finishes and brought to site. Once on site, the units were assembled quickly and connected to the mechanical and electrical services to be ready for operation. In its first phase of operation, the facility has about 670 guest rooms and about 170 meeting rooms, together with several guest amenities including indoor gardens, gym pods, food vending units etc. to provide a comfortable and safe stay. The modular nature of the entire scheme was also essential to allow for rapid scaling up of the facility, should the demand increase depending on the fickle local and global situation. On the other hand, a longer-term sustainability is ensured through the PPVC units that can be easily re-utilized elsewhere in the post-pandemic world – thus reducing wastage and lowering the carbon footprint.