Tearing down Singapore’s love of brand-new buildings
To place the Republic’s built environment on a more sustainable footing, developers need to turn away from demolishing and rebuilding, and move instead to adaptive reuse.
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Wong Pei Ting
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TAYLOR Swift had been singing longer than Bedok Point had been standing, when developer Frasers Property said in 2021 that it would tear down the four-storey mall at 11 years of age. In its place: Sky Eden@Bedok, a 17-storey residential-commercial hybrid.
Earlier this year, CapitaLand Development announced that it will take the wrecking ball to JCube, an 11-year old five-storey mall in Jurong East, to make room for the 40-storey J’den project, another residential-commercial hybrid.
In their developers’ pursuit of profits, many commercial buildings in Singapore are being demolished and rebuilt before their useful life is fully up, generating a tremendous amount of waste and emissions. Adapting and reusing buildings and structures are more sustainable, but it will take a confluence of aligned policies and industry acceptance to shift the needle.
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