Singapore is not short of tall buildings. There are three office buildings in the business district that share the honour of being joint tallest, at 280 metres (or 920 feet) tall. By comparison, the wonderful Marina Bay Sands hotel - the one with the swimming pool shaped like a ship on top) - is a mere two hundred metres, but that's two hundred metres of gorgeousness.
When my sister, the lovely Alison, came to stay at the end of last year, she and I decided to pay a visit to one of Singapore's most recent entrants to the list of very tall buildings and headed down to the Pinnacle @ Duxton. I have to confess that I have very mixed feelings about this building. When it was first being constructed, I thought it was a gigantic blot on the landscape, and to some extent, I still think that whenever I come upon it at ground level. It is 163 metres tall, composed of seven connected towers, and dominates the skyline if you are in Chinatown or the business district. It is, frankly, huge, and the biggest public housing project in Singapore by a very long way. I really do not like the way that the windows form the wiggly lines that you can see in the photo on the left, but I absolutely love the views from the 50th storey skybridge that links all the towers together. In fact, I love everything about the skybridge. The views are fabulous,completely out of this world, all for the bargain price of five Singapore dollars to non-residents. The afternoon we went , there were fewer than a dozen visitors - the two of us, a young expat couple and four Singaporeans doing a fashion photo shoot. They said that they often come to the Pinnacle and I can see why.
The skybridge flows continuously but has lots of different sections enabling visitors to sit down (or lie down in some cases) to enjoy the view or just meditate. There is even a patch of concrete painted in a cool blue, presumably to suggest to the eye and the mind the presence of a swimming pool. No matter how luxurious the HDB, however, a swimming pool is never part of the deal.
So, if you live in Singapore and are reading this, get yourself off to the Pinnacle on the next clear day. It will be the best 5 dollars you have ever spent, which is saying something in the city where you can get a big bowl of pig organ soup for the same price.........
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| Model of the Pinnacle @ Duxton, courtesy of the HDB |
When my sister, the lovely Alison, came to stay at the end of last year, she and I decided to pay a visit to one of Singapore's most recent entrants to the list of very tall buildings and headed down to the Pinnacle @ Duxton. I have to confess that I have very mixed feelings about this building. When it was first being constructed, I thought it was a gigantic blot on the landscape, and to some extent, I still think that whenever I come upon it at ground level. It is 163 metres tall, composed of seven connected towers, and dominates the skyline if you are in Chinatown or the business district. It is, frankly, huge, and the biggest public housing project in Singapore by a very long way. I really do not like the way that the windows form the wiggly lines that you can see in the photo on the left, but I absolutely love the views from the 50th storey skybridge that links all the towers together. In fact, I love everything about the skybridge. The views are fabulous,completely out of this world, all for the bargain price of five Singapore dollars to non-residents. The afternoon we went , there were fewer than a dozen visitors - the two of us, a young expat couple and four Singaporeans doing a fashion photo shoot. They said that they often come to the Pinnacle and I can see why.
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| Isabel living the high life |
The skybridge flows continuously but has lots of different sections enabling visitors to sit down (or lie down in some cases) to enjoy the view or just meditate. There is even a patch of concrete painted in a cool blue, presumably to suggest to the eye and the mind the presence of a swimming pool. No matter how luxurious the HDB, however, a swimming pool is never part of the deal.
So, if you live in Singapore and are reading this, get yourself off to the Pinnacle on the next clear day. It will be the best 5 dollars you have ever spent, which is saying something in the city where you can get a big bowl of pig organ soup for the same price.........
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