PLP Architecture has revealed its design for a new signature luxury residential tower on a beguiling garden site along Orchard Boulevard in Singapore’s most coveted neighbourhood. Park Nova will be a biophilic enclave rising above the surrounding greenery, embraced in a lush vertical garden. The building brings a new focus on modern metropolitan living and aims to redefine urban living in the garden city.

Park Nova’s biophilic design has been inspired by the context, history and setting of the local area, once home to orchards and now a lifestyle destination that maintains its lush green character. Drawing on the form of a butterfly, the building is elevated above the tree canopy on slender columns and features gently undulating floorplates arranged into three wings to maximise the potential for natural shading and ventilation.

PLP Architecture is part of an international team that includes OUTCOMIST, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, CRA - Carlo Ratti Associati and Arup that has won a major competition to realise Parco Romana, an urban-scale redevelopment project in Milan’s Porta Romana district. The project interprets the industrial legacy of the site while reanimating it with contemporary programs centred on an ethos of sustainability.

The scheme rethinks a large railway yard that has divided the area for more than a century. It stitches together a fragmented urban realm, reconnecting surrounding neighbourhoods with a vibrant mixed-use district rooted in the principles of inclusivity, biodiversity, resiliency, connectivity and wellbeing. Built around a new Great Park that serves as the green heart of the development, Parco Romana celebrates its layered histories while offering shared environments for living and working that unite a diverse community of residents, students, office workers, athletes and visitors.

4 Cannon Street has been selected as recipient of the Contribution to Context Award, a special award created for this year’s City of London Building of the Year Awards to specifically honour the building. The recognition was given by the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects and highlights the building’s sensitive design, which confidently respects place and context on its site between three listed buildings at the heart of the City.