The top-tier properties in the Pan Pacific Hotels Group are covered in foliage top to bottom and inside and out. As their first biophilic design tower, Parkroyal Collection Pickering in the middle of Singapore, hits double digits, we look at how these hotels are taking eco-friendly luxury into the next era.
IN CENTRAL SINGAPORE, Parkroyal Collection Pickering celebrates its tenth anniversary this year and its pioneering biophilic design, characterized by the jungle foliage that fills the 16-story gaps between the structure’s three main towers, is even more striking to behold today than it was when it first opened. That’s because it’s greener, denser and more luxuriant, providing a vertical echo to Hong Lim Park across the street. The mix of greenery and modern architecture in an urban landscape is the trademark of the award-winning Singapore studio WOHA.
It’s also something that was ahead of its time a decade ago, and is now happily watching the market (that’s us, luxury travelers!) catch up. “Seventy-one percent of travelers want to travel more sustainably, up 10 percent from 2021,” says Choe Peng Sum, the CEO of Pan Pacific Hotels Group, quoting booking.com‘s Sustainable Travel Report 2022. “Fifty-three percent are more determined to make sustainable travel choices.” Choe joined the parent company of the Parkroyal Collection hotels in 2019 and has been an outspoken eco-friendly advocate in favor of sustainability in the group ever since.
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Parkroyal on Beach Road
The juxtaposition of green spaces and contemporary buildings in Parkroyal Collection Pickering is about more than just aesthetics. In addition to the striking visuals, the plants help to cool the building and filter the air. On level five, you’ll find the wellness floor with a spa and a gorgeous pool dotted with birdcage gazebos. The entire floor is ringed with a 300-meter long track, ideal for your morning jog or for a stroll in this urban jungle. With its green exterior, it’s not surprising that Parkroyal Collection Pickering is also called a hotel in a garden.
The hotel embraces sustainability and the environment in less obvious ways, as well. It makes use of solar power, has motion sensors to turn off unneeded lights, manages water and food waste, and is expanding the rooftop urban garden to supply the restaurants and spa. That extra tap in your bathroom actually dispenses filtered drinking water for your refillable bottles, eliminating the need for single-use plastic ones. And the list goes on.
If Pickering is a hotel in a garden, then Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay, which underwent a massive nine-month renovation in 2020, encapsulates a garden in the hotel. The late American architect John Portman is known for his iconic soaring atriums and when you look up and down from the green lobby floor, what you see is 21 stories bathed in natural light. A detail that completes this pastoral scene is the bird keeper who arrives every morning with his birds and distributes them around the floor. In the afternoon, he collects his birdcages and returns home with his chirping charges.
Here, too, there is a conscious effort to be respectful of the environment. The group spent millions just to install more energy efficient windows. Given the fact that the guest rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows, the change makes a big difference to the guests’ comfort and to energy consumption.
The hotel also takes its role as a place to learn about sustainability very seriously. Staff have hosted hundreds of local school children, showing them some of the behind-the-scenes initiatives around the hotel, like the solar panels on the roof with great views across Marina Bay or tours of the hotel’s Urban Garden that are watered with harvested rainwater.
Going green goes beyond the Parkroyal Collections in Singapore. Following the lead of its sister eco-friendly hotels, Parkroyal Collection Kuala Lumpur, the brand’s first foray outside of Singapore, has also installed water filters in all guest rooms for refilling water bottles and is adding an urban garden, too. The earthy design is the work of DP Architects and FDAT, who have also ensured that the hotel’s 1,200 square meters of greenery purify the air and keep things cool.
Back in Singapore, Pan Pacific Orchard opened with considerable fanfare in June of this year. And the hotel’s eye-catching façade, again the biophilic work of design studio WOHA, has a lot to do with that. The ground-floor Forest Terrace is replicated in three stacked blocks called the Beach, Garden and Cloud Terraces, resulting in a building that looks like it is more airy volumes than solid walls and enclosed spaces. All guest rooms either look onto the terraces or out at the city. Check out our review of Singapore’s newest eco-friendly hotel, in the middle of shopping central, here.
Images courtesy of Parkroyal Collection Pickering.
