Rooms in new Mandai resort to include pod-shaped treehouses
SINGAPORE: Guest rooms in treehouses shaped like seedpods, elevated walkways snaking through a forest canopy and interactive guided nature walks - these are some features the new Mandai eco-resort volition offer when it opens its doors in 2023.
Speaking at a media conference at the Singapore Zoo on Thursday (May 23), luxury resort operator Banyan Tree Holdings' CEO Ho Kwon Ping said that visitors at the 338-room resort volition savour "unprecedented access" to nature during their stay.
"Because and so much of this has been planned sensitively, our guests volition come and realise that it'southward not an urban hotel in the eye of Mandai park," Mr Ho said. "Information technology is an experience where they will accept unprecedented access to nature in all niggling ways."
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This is Banyan Tree'south commencement resort in Singapore; the company has 47 other hotels and resorts around the globe.
Banyan Tree will operate the resort, which volition be owned by Mandai Park Holdings, which manages wildlife attractions such as the Singapore Zoo, River Safari, Dark Safari and Jurong Bird Park.
The design of the resort will be helmed past local architectural firm WOW Architects.
One of the aspirations of the project was to have the building and the landscape "become one", WOW Architects' managing manager Wong Chiu Man said.
This ways minimising the impact the resort complex will take on the environment. As such, the resort will merely occupy previously disturbed areas inside the 4.half-dozen-hectare site which currently houses the Singapore Zoo's back-of-house facilities.
"We have more or less completely kept the rest of the forest intact," said Mr Wong. "Where we have inserted elements such equally the treehouses, they take been inserted in such a mode that nosotros have scarcely cut downwardly whatever trees at all."
BRINGING GUESTS CLOSER TO NATURE
When completed, the evolution aims to get the first Super Low Free energy resort in Singapore - with its pattern incorporating free energy-saving measures including the use of natural ventilation equally well as solar panels.
All-encompassing planting will be washed on the roof and facade of the resort buildings, and more than half the trees on the site will be retained.
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Wherever possible, the resort will be elevated several metres above the ground to permit native wildlife to move beyond the site.
Guests will also be able to choose to stay in 24 treehouses designed in the shape of seedpods, and participate inbehind-the-scenes programmes, guided nature walks as well as hands-on activities. There will likewise be camping opportunities, said Mr Mike Barclay, group CEO of Mandai Park Holdings.
"Right from the kickoff, WOW Architects impressed the states," Mr Barclay told reporters. "They showed a deep and fundamental understanding of the pattern brief and they were on the same wavelength as us - they understood what nosotros were trying to achieve."
"When nosotros got together, we decided that any design we came up with, we need to immerse people in the rainforest," added Mr Barclay. "That must be fundamental, nosotros demand to accept a very light touch on on the site and nosotros also need the resort to celebrate sustainable all-time practices."
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The Mandai precinct is undergoing a rejuvenation project, which will see the relocation of Jurong Bird Park and the evolution of a new Rainforest Park in the same area as the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari and River Safari.
"We desire our guests to come to the resort and have a conscious stay," said Mr Barclay. "Nosotros desire them to exist witting of the rainforest all around them, we want them to be witting of how information technology's best to interact with plants and animals, we also desire to go out them with some consciousness nigh how nosotros can lighten our touch on the natural globe."
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/mandai-eco-resort-rooms-treehouses-banyan-nature-225941
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