Judge's comment:
This residential apartment development comprising two forty storey towers in central Singapore pushes the boundaries of Prefabricated, Pre-finished Volumetric Construction into new territory.
The towers sit on top of a five-storey car parking podium, and are formed out of thin-walled modular pre-cast concrete box units, each weighing between 14 and 29 tonnes.
Longitudinal lateral stability is provided by conventional reinforced concrete cores, while transverse stability is afforded by the modular concrete unit side walls.
Effective vertical and lateral tying is critical to this approach, and is accomplished by using an ingenious system of vertical tie bars, linking through encast wire loops set within recesses in the walls of the modular units, which are subsequently fully-filled with high-strength grout.
Horizontal tying is achieved by the placing of high-strength cable reinforcement into recesses in the floor slabs of the modular units, which are subsequently fully-grouted in position.
The fundamental time benefits of Design for Manufacture and Assembly are evident in the astonishing 72% improvement in productivity achieved, increasing man-day/m2 construction figures from the Singapore average of around 0.36 m2, to over 0.61 m2/day. The construction team was typically able to deliver a floor-to-floor cycle time of six to nine days.