Nearly two decades after the Marina Bay Sands resort made its dramatic debut on Singapore’s skyline, Safdie Architects is embarking on the expected final chapter of its acclaimed and, to some, audacious venture adjacent to the original architectural masterpiece. Last month, the firm and founder Moshe Safdie broke ground on an $8 billion project for the development that will realize a towering new 570-suite hotel and 15,000-seat arena designed by Populous.
When completed in 2029, these components will cap the genre-defining project that has drawn 470 million visitors in its 15 years in operation.
The new hotel and events venue are connected by a podium and located to the immediate plots adjacent to the original resort towers, which just received a $1.75 billion upgrade. The expansion wraps up a process that first began in 2006, and has unfolded with both intense scrutiny and widespread acceptance.
Fans of Safdie’s 2010 design will note the forthcoming 55-story hotel and resort tower deviates significantly from its shorter predecessors. It will be rotated at a 45-degree angle and feature triple-height garden terraces which increase in area as they climb upward. Its facades are designed to reduce solar gain while repeating the proportionality of the first three towers.
The development will be getting more outdoor public areas plus a “two-tiered,” 76,000-square-foot Skyloop rooftop dining attraction and observatory that’s slightly higher than the signature Sands SkyPark feature at the adjacent resort development. An additional 200,000 square feet will be siphoned off for meetings, conferences, and exhibitions in the 3-story podium.
In the press campaign for his 2022 memoir, Safdie said additional space would be respectful of the entire vision and that gambling, a constant criticism of the project, was not necessarily an ethical challenge for him. Moving forward, the project will look to become the “envy of the hospitality industry,” adding to a successful run that casino owner Vegas Sands’s CEO Robert Goldstein said has resulted in the “most successful resort in history.”
Safdie Architects has been active in the city-state for a while, with a pair of other project completions in 2024 that follow the firm’s 2016 Jewel Changi Airport commission. In a catch-up with AN last May, Safdie talked about the history of his multifaceted building relationship with Singapore, which began in 1985 with the since-demolished Ardmore housing complex.
Josh Niland is a writer and editor with work published in Artnet, Architectural Digest, Artforum, Hyperallergic, WHITEHOT magazine, and the Boston Phoenix. He holds a degree in philosophy from Boston University and worked previously as the featured staff writer at Archinect.
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