Parkview Square

Parkview Square
Parkview Square
General information
Type	Commercial offices
Architectural style	Postmodern / Neo Art Deco / New Classical
Location	North Bridge Road, Downtown Core, Singapore
Coordinates	1°18′0.5″N 103°51′27.48″E / 1.300139°N 103.8576333°E
Construction started	1999
Completed	2002
Owner	Chyau Fwu Development
Management	Chyau Fwu Development
Height
Roof	144 m (472 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	24; 2 basements
Floor area	39,145 m2 (421,350 sq ft)
Lifts/elevators	11
Design and construction
Architect(s)	DP Architects
Developer	Chyau Fwu Development
Website
	www.ParkviewSquare.com
References

Parkview Square is an office building located in the Downtown Core planning area of the Central Region in Singapore. It is situated along North Bridge Road, and is near the major commercial hub at Marina Centre. It is next to Bugis MRT station, Bugis Junction, and The Gateway, and straddles the Rochor Road and Ophir Road corridor.

Occupants

Parkview Square houses the Honorary Consulate of Oman on the 4th floor, the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates^[5] on the 9th floor, as well as the embassies of Austria and Mongolia on the 24th floor.^[6]^[7] The third floor is entirely occupied by the Parkview Museum where international contemporary art exhibitions are presented every year.^[8]

Atlas

Atlas, the bar in the lobby of the building, has a unique 3-storey gin tower housing over a thousand gins. The tower used to hold a wine chiller from which a female bartender dressed as a fairy would retrieve bottles on request by means of a flying wire apparatus.

Design and architecture

Parkview Square was designed by Singapore's DP Architects of Singapore. It was developed by Chyau Fwu Group, and it was the last major project by C. S. Hwang, its founder.

The office space on each floor is column-less so it can be reconfigured according to the tenant's wish. Although it is a modern building, having been completed in 2002, it is designed in the classic Art Deco style, inspired by New York City's 1929 Chanin Building. The exterior surface of the building is clad in brown granite, bronze, lacquer, and glass.

The lobby is also designed in the Art Deco style and features a 15m-high ceiling with hand-crafted details.

The open plaza of Parkview Square is reminiscent of Piazza San Marco in Venice with sculptures and statues surrounding the open plaza. There are many bronze effigies of some of the most famous figures in world history, including Sun Yat-sen, Abraham Lincoln, Salvador Dalí, and Mozart.

The building has widespread use of motifs, sculptures, and ornamentation. The building is guarded by eight gigantic fiberglass statues of men holding a light ball in their hands, four of them standing on each broad side of the building's crown. Gargoyles decorate the building’s exterior.

Golden crane statue

In the center of the plaza is a statue of a golden crane with its head lifted, its wings in pre-flight mode. On the pedestal, a poem is written in Chinese:

黄鹤楼

故国旧有黄鹤楼
北望神州几千秋
黄鹤展翅飞万里
伟哉狮城见鹤楼

The poem refers to a mythical crane looking towards the direction of its temple (a place of worship in Hubei, China) and eager to fly the thousands of miles back, depicting the homesickness of the owner. The poem also appears as an Easter egg in Original illustration of the Chinese version of StarCraft 2.^[9]

The statue is supposed to bring wealth to the building.