Experiential retail is a readily bandied buzzword these days, but I never really understood it until I visited the recently-revamped Funan. Designed by Woods Bagot and developed by CapitaLand, this building is intensely mixed use. On top of the huge shopping centre, the development contains: a performing arts venue, cinema, lifestyle co-living (hotel), offices and co-working spaces, and a public rooftop urban farm.
The multitude of uses crammed into a dense urban site might sound a bit chaotic, and it is in the best possible way! The variety and intensity makes Funan feel less like a stock standard shopping mall and more like a microcosm of an authentic urban condition. The experience is more like a city-within-a-city in a way that more conventional mixed-use developments (with a residential or office tower stacked on top of a retail podium) typically fails to acheive.
The architecture echoes the delightful chaos of the urban experience. Externally, the various components are expressed in a mishmash of architectural languages, distinguishinging the various components and breaking down the scale of the building.
Internally, the building is organised around an angular atrium. Bathed in natural light from above, jagged overlapping terraced circulation spaces create a dynamic spacial quality. A dramatic tree-like structure at the centre of the atrium features rock-climbing wall as the ‘trunk’ and cantilevered shops & cafes. It’s crazy and that’s great.
Urbanistically, the building enhances the streetscape condition with generous through-block circulation and a dedicated cycling network. The building even has a bicycle route that passes through the mall itself, a bold experiment and interesting civic gesture. It remains to see whether this will be successful, the building has been so popular that it’s unlikely that someone could cycle through the crowds. Generous cycle parking areas and repair & charging stations are yet another welcome contribution to the city.
Alongside a small plaza at the front of the building, a large scale kinetic artwork acts as an urban-scale clock. A mirrored ceiling over the plaza makes it feel grand.
Atop the building is a publicly accessible productive urban farm. It’s not just a sustainable token, the farm produce is served in Funan’s restaurants. The green roof also features public picnic tables, barbecue pits and a futsal court!
The rooftop urban farm provides stunning views of the Singapore skyline.
Images by Jonathan Choe
