Supertropical

At the turn of this century, the populous metropolises of Far East Asia began to reconsider their model of development, which until then was based on rapid urban growth indifferent both to morphological and landscape peculiarities and to the historical matrix of their sites. The result of this growth was increasingly homogeneous and banal cityscapes. As an antidote to this trend, some megacities executed functional reconversion projects transforming central areas into entirely new “natural” sites. These projects, in which landscape architecture played a major role, reflected a strategy of reconstructing an original identity that had been lost. The final goal of the massive interventions went beyond simple urban requalification: in a market where big cities compete to become financial, commercial, or transport hubs, an ambitious metropolis needs a winning image. Singapore has found a way to renew its image as a megacity of the future through tropical nature, in the wild lushness of its original forests, which is evoked in the Gardens by the Bay, the largest and most complex landscape architecture project ever undertaken in the island city-state. Gardens by the Bay is an ambitious system of three waterfront parks (Bay South, Bay East and Bay Central). The article is a critical reading of the first of the three parks to be completed: Bay South, designed by a team led by Grant Associates and opened to the public in 2012.