Last week, construction of the world’s tallest modular buildings was completed in Singapore.
The Clement Canopy building consists of two 40-story towers with 505 luxury apartments, located in the heart of this city’s residential and Kent Ridge Education Belt districts. Each tower is 459 ft tall, and combined they are made up of 1,899 modules whose weight ranged from 37,000 to 64,000 lbs.
UOL Group, a leading real estate and property management firm in Singapore, is the project’s client as part of a development joint venture with Singland Homes. ADDP Architects was the project's architect.
Clement Canopy is the first structure on the island to use an all-concrete version of the Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction (PPVC) system, where freestanding modules, complete with finishes for walls, floors, and ceilings, are produced offsite and then assembled onsite, according to Concrete Construction magazine.
In April 2016, the Singapore government awarded Dragages Singapore, a subsidiary of France-based general contractor Bouygues Bâtiment International, the contract to design and build Clement Canopy. Aurélie Cleraux, Bouygues Bâtiment’s head of modular construction, tells BD+C that more than 60% of the two towers’ superstructure was built offsite. The modules were cast by a concrete precast manufacturer in Senei, Malaysia, in five days. (The project required a total of 48 module shapes.) The fitouts were completed in the contractor’s factory in Tuas, Singapore, within 15 days. The modules included mechanicals and plumbing, plastering, painting, and bathroom fixtures and tiles.
The contractor used two Liebherr 1000 EC-H 40 Litronic High-Top tower cranes to erect the towers. The Clement Canopy project was delivered in 30 months, six months ahead of its initial timeline. Cleraux says most of this period was spent in designing and planning.
Cleraux explains that there’s a big push by the Singapore government to improve construction productivity. And the benefits of modular and prefabrication processes, he says, are that they can reduce construction time by up to 50%, and reduce onsite labor by 30%. Other benefits include reduction of jobsite noise, pollution and neighborhood disruption; improvements in jobsite safety and the quality of the finished product, as well as the possible reuse of the building’s materials down the road.
In February 2018, Dragages Singapore won a €13 million ($9.6 million) contract to build six more 15-story residential buildings in Singapore whose reinforced concrete structures will be 65% factory built.
“We are going to see a complete disruption in the next few years: our clients expect ever more efficient and faster building solutions,” Nicolas Borit, CEO of Bouygues Bâtiment International, told Global Construction Review last year. “Through the experience we have acquired on a number of projects, we are able to provide modular construction solutions today which fully meet their expectations, from design through to the construction of the final product.”
These six buildings were expected to take 33 months to complete.
Related Stories
| Nov 25, 2013
Building Teams need to help owners avoid 'operational stray'
"Operational stray" occurs when a building’s MEP systems don’t work the way they should. Even the most well-designed and constructed building can stray from perfection—and that can cost the owner a ton in unnecessary utility costs. But help is on the way.
Sponsored | | Nov 20, 2013
Four faces of curb appeal
The Furniture Row retail center in Charlotte, N.C., incorporates four specialty stores in a distinctive, efficient structure.
| Nov 19, 2013
Top 10 green building products for 2014
Assa Abloy's power-over-ethernet access-control locks and Schüco's retrofit façade system are among the products to make BuildingGreen Inc.'s annual Top-10 Green Building Products list.
| Nov 15, 2013
Pedia-Pod: A state-of-the-art pediatric building module
This demonstration pediatric treatment building module is “kid-friendly,” offering a unique and cheerful environment where a child can feel most comfortable.
| Nov 14, 2013
Behind the build: BD+C's 'Pedia-Pod' modular pediatric patient unit at Greenbuild 2013 [slideshow]
Next week at Greenbuild, BD+C will unveil its demonstration pediatric patient unit, called Pedia-Pod. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the construction of this unique modular structure.
| Oct 30, 2013
11 hot BIM/VDC topics for 2013
If you like to geek out on building information modeling and virtual design and construction, you should enjoy this overview of the top BIM/VDC topics.
| Oct 28, 2013
Urban growth doesn’t have to destroy nature—it can work with it
Our collective desire to live in cities has never been stronger. According to the World Health Organization, 60% of the world’s population will live in a city by 2030. As urban populations swell, what people demand from their cities is evolving.
| Oct 23, 2013
Some lesser-known benefits of metal buildings
While the durability of metal as a construction material is widely recognized, some of its other advantages are less commonly acknowledged and appreciated.
| Oct 18, 2013
Meet the winners of BD+C's $5,000 Vision U40 Competition
Fifteen teams competed last week in the first annual Vision U40 Competition at BD+C's Under 40 Leadership Summit in San Francisco. Here are the five winning teams, including the $3,000 grand prize honorees.
| Oct 18, 2013
Researchers discover tension-fusing properties of metal
When a group of MIT researchers recently discovered that stress can cause metal alloy to fuse rather than break apart, they assumed it must be a mistake. It wasn't. The surprising finding could lead to self-healing materials that repair early damage before it has a chance to spread.
