Tiong Seng Building

The industrial building is a redevelopment of Tiong Seng Contractors’ current premises for maintenance and logistics of its fleet of construction vehicles, equipment and resources. The new building includes space for the construction company’s head office at the three topmost storeys. Tiong Seng Contractors has always embraced new technologies and construction systems to build better and faster. This project is guided by Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) principles from design through to construction. In addition, the early involvement of the contractor further shaped the design in facilitating construction. The simple L-shaped plan, composed mostly of standard grids of 9m, is flagged at 3 corners by circulation cores. The three cores are strategically distributed to meet fire escape requirements, and the only cast in-situ structural walls of the building are located here to serve as anchors to the assemblage of precast and prefab structural skeleton. All columns and beams were designed to be precast with mechanical jointing, with hollow core floor planks spanning the high-volume, high-loading industrial storeys. Lightweight concrete flat slab system is employed at the uppermost office storeys as they are not functionally required to withstand high loading; synthetic void former modules are used in the formation of the flat slabs to reduce concrete usage and overall weight of the structural slab. Moreover, the project is the first in Singapore to use Grade 600 rebar. The use of high-strength rebar meant lesser quantities were required to achieve the desired structural performance. All these contributed to decrease the overall dead load of the building and greatly reduced the pile length, resulting in savings for foundation works. The aluminium louvred envelope, wrapping across the longer arm of the building, is subtlely striated in three broad bands differentiated by the opening sizes between louvre blades. The openings for the naturally-ventilated production floors at the lower storeys are the largest to overcome the impeded wind flow at the lower levels. Opening sizes decrease at each subsequent band of louvres above as the building rises to tower above the relatively flat industrial landscape of low-rise sheds. In the tropical climate, however, cross-ventilation needs must balance the opposing need to shield against rainwater ingress. Thus, as opening sizes between louvre blades increase, so do the depths of louvres. The louvres open to reveal the slit of office windows at the 8th storey, the only office storey to occupy the full L-shaped floorplate. The manoeuvre resulted also from considerations to ease façade maintenance between the windows and alum louvres. The result is a straightforward expression of the adaptation of the building envelope to its programmatic needs and micro-environment. Each prefabricated alum louvre panel is modulated at 8.4m x 1.5m, a size that can be easily transported to and assembled on site. Mounting brackets are installed onto the building structure and each panel hung onto the building. The rest of the façade is made up of an assembly of precast wall panels with cast-in window frames where applicable. Each precast panel is then bolted onto the structural skeleton. At the inner east façade, a portal in glazed curtain wall protrudes out of the building. Behind this curtain wall is an internal atrium that will house the feature internal staircase linking the 3-storey office space. The staircase is made of Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC), which contributed to the slim 50mm thick staircase flight profile. In the design and construction process, the team also selectively employed Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) strategies supported by the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) to achieve project goals. For example, Integrated Concurrent Engineering (ICE) sessions were set up for targeted issue-based resolution involving the simultaneous involvement of relevant stakeholders in a big-room setting. During these sessions, ideation for resolution is not bounded by discipline or hierarchy; it also reduces the response latency of each stakeholder in responding to an issue when decision-makers are present.