Tall & Urban News

Joint property developers Hong Leong Holdings and GuocoLand chose the decidedly French name The Avenir for their luxury condo project on Singapore’s River Valley Close in prime District 9.

“Perhaps the name was inspired by my Frenchness,” says French architect Jean Francois Milou, lead designer and director of the eponymous studioMilou, who designed The Avenir in collaboration with ADDP Architects. “Avenir means ‘towards’ and venir means ‘to come’ in French. It also means ‘future,’ and implicitly, an optimistic one.”

The 376-unit The Avenir was one of three luxury condo projects in the Core Central Region (CCR) launched on 11 January 2020 ahead of the Lunar New Year festival and prior to the outbreak of Covid-19.

A total of 20 units out of 40 released at The Avenir were purchased over the launch weekend. Of these, seven were premium four-bedroom units with private lift access, while the remaining 13 units were a mix of one- to three-bedroom units.

As of 18 February 2020, a total of 25 units were sold. “All the deals went through,” says Dominic Lee, head of luxury team at PropNex Realty. “With the Covid-19 outbreak, we had expected some of the buyers to pull out but no one did.”

There is anecdotal evidence of some deals being pulled as buyers from China could not travel to Singapore to complete their purchase because of the travel ban. “The Chinese were already planning to buy property in Singapore,” says PropNex’s Lee. “Once the Covid-19 outbreak blows over and the travel ban is lifted, these buyers will return. We could see a V-shaped recovery then.”

What is noteworthy is that two-thirds of the buyers at The Avenir were locals while one-third were foreigners, primarily from China and the US. There were also buyers from Malaysia and the UK, as well as one buyer from Vietnam and another from Cyprus, says Chng.

ADDP Architects associate partner, Tang Kok Thye, has designed many of the upscale condominiums in the CCR, including GuocoLand’s Martin Modern where he collaborated with iPli Architects; New Futura in collaboration with international firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill by City Developments; and Pullman Residences Newton by EL Development.

With high land prices, most property developers are concerned with maximizing gross floor area (GFA) and efficiency of the units, adds Tang. “For luxury properties, you have to make sure that the units are efficient, yet make the rooms feel spacious.” At The Avenir, ceiling height of apartments has been raised to 3.2 meters for an elevated sense of space, he adds.

ADDP is also involved in the design of two upcoming projects to be launched this year: KOPAR at Newton at Kampong Java Road by Chip Eng Seng Corp; and GuocoLand’s upcoming project, Midtown Gardens, at Tan Quee Lan Street.

At The Avenir, it was the desire to create a product with a strong identity that led to ADDP’s collaboration with StudioMilou. “We felt that the neighborhood lacked identity,” says Tang.

The Avenir is a redevelopment of the former Pacific Mansion, which sat on a freehold site of 128,352 square feet (11,924 square meters) at River Valley Close. The site was purchased en bloc by the Hong Leong-led consortium in March 2018, and it marked one of the highest collective sale deals in over a decade.

While The Avenir was not the first luxury residential project that studioMilou has designed, it is the first high-rise luxury condominium project the architectural firm has undertaken in Singapore.

The twin 36-story towers at The Avenir are “a classical inspiration” drawn from the vertical form and proportions of a cathedral, says Milou. “While The Avenir is of course a very secular work of architecture, we aimed to contribute a design that is an integral part of the street itself, which is more likely to make a lasting impression,” he adds.

He felt that there was a need to create “a consistently powerful experience of elegance and tranquillity” not just from the entrance into the development, but also from the street level. “The intention was to see the street as a beautiful corridor leading to your apartment,” adds Milou. “It is not something I have seen in Singapore. I hope we can make a difference.”

For the new owner of a unit at The Avenir, “it is not just about buying an apartment, but an address”, says Milou. “We want to enforce that River Valley Close will remain a prime address in the city in the future.”

Emphasis was also placed on landscaping, with Tinderbox Landscape Studio as the landscape design architect. “The grounds are divided into a series of landscaped courtyards, where you come in from a public space to a semi-private space and then a private space,” explains ADDP’s Tang. The residential towers are elevated more than 10 meters above ground, which frees up more space for greenery such as the lawn and facilities from tennis courts to the swimming pool on the undulating terrain, he adds. There are also landscaped roof terraces on the top of both towers.

“We are not trying to capture the last trendy thing circulating in town,” says Milou. “That’s not our thing. We try to create verticality, noblesse of materials, and the well-defined articulation of space.”

For more on this story go to EdgeProp.