Parkview Square is an

office building An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific dut ...

located in the

Downtown Core The Downtown Core is the historical and downtown centre of the city-state of Singapore and the main commercial area in Singapore excluding reclaimed lands with many integrated resorts such as the Marina Bay Sands, one of the most expensive buildi ...

planning area of the Central Region in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

. It is situated along

North Bridge Road North Bridge Road () is a one-way road in Singapore, running north of the Singapore River. It starts at the junction with Crawford Street in Kallang, on the western bank of the Rochor River, and continues in a southwest direction before ending at ...

, and is near the major commercial hub at

Marina Centre Marina Central or Marina Centre (Chinese: 滨海中心; ms, Marina Pusat) is a zone of reclaimed land within the Downtown Core in the southern part of Singapore. Together with the Marina South area, it encloses the sheltered Marina Bay. Sun ...

. It is next to

Bugis MRT station Bugis MRT station is an underground Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) interchange station on the East West line and Downtown line in Bugis, Singapore. Located under the junction of Rochor Road and Victoria Street, the station is close to Bugis Juncti ...

, Bugis Junction, and The Gateway, and straddles the Rochor Road and Ophir Road corridor.

Occupants

Parkview Square houses the Honorary Consulate of Oman on the 4th floor, the Embassy of the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia ( The Middle East). It is located at t ...

on the 9th floor, as well as the embassies of

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

and

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

on the 24th floor. The third floor is entirely occupied by the Parkview Museum where international contemporary art exhibitions are presented every year.

Design and architecture

Parkview Square was designed by Singapore's

DP Architects DP Architects Pvt. Ltd. is a Singaporean multinational architectural industrial design firm. It started as Design Partnership in 1967 and was incorporated as a private limited company in 1993. It is a multi-disciplinary design consultancy. It ...

of Singapore. It was developed by Chyau Fwu Group, and it was the last major project by C. S. Hwang, its founder. The office space on each floor is column-less so it can be reconfigured according to the tenant's wish. Although it is a modern building, having been completed in 2002, it is designed in the classic

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style, inspired by

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

's 1929

Chanin Building Chanin is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Alabama Chanin, American fashion designer *Irwin Chanin (1891–1988), American architect *Jack Chanin (1907–1997), US-based Ukrainian magician *Jim Chanin (born 1947), American attor ...

. The exterior surface of the building is clad in brown

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

, bronze, lacquer, and

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling ( quenching ...

. The lobby is also designed in the Art Deco style and features a 15m-high ceiling with hand-crafted details. The bar in the

lobby Lobby may refer to: * Lobby (room), an entranceway or foyer in a building * Lobbying, the action or the group used to influence a viewpoint to politicians :* Lobbying in the United States, specific to the United States * Lobby (food), a thick stew ...

of the building has a unique 3-storey gin tower housing over a thousand gins. The tower used to hold a wine chiller from which a female bartender dressed as a fairy would retrieve bottles on request by means of a flying wire apparatus. The open plaza of Parkview Square is reminiscent of

Piazza San Marco Piazza San Marco (; vec, Piasa San Marco), often known in English as St Mark's Square, is the principal public square of Venice, Italy, where it is generally known just as ''la Piazza'' ("the Square"). All other urban spaces in the city (exc ...

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

with sculptures and statues surrounding the open plaza. There are many bronze effigies of some of the most famous figures in world history, including Sun Yat-sen,

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...

, Mozart, Chopin,

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

, Rembrandt,

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

Dante Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

. The building has widespread use of motifs, sculptures, and ornamentation. The building is guarded by eight gigantic fiberglass statues of men holding a light ball in their hands, four of them standing on each broad side of the building's crown. Gargoyles decorate the building’s exterior.

Golden crane statue

In the center of the plaza is a statue of a golden crane with its head lifted, its wings in pre-flight mode. On the pedestal, a poem is written in Chinese: The poem refers to a mythical crane looking towards the direction of its temple (a place of worship in

Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The ...

, China) and eager to fly the thousands of miles back, depicting the homesickness of the owner. The poem also appears as an Easter egg in Original illustration of the Chinese version of

StarCraft 2 ''StarCraft II'' is a military science fiction video game created by Blizzard Entertainment as a sequel to the successful ''StarCraft'' video game released in 1998. Set in a fictional future, the game centers on a galactic struggle for dominance ...

. The statue is supposed to bring wealth to the building.

Gallery

File:Parkview Square.jpg, File:Parkview Square 4, Dec 05.JPG, File:Parkview Square, Dec 05.JPG, File:Parkview Square Crane, Oct 05.JPG, Signature crane sculpture

References

{{Singapore skyscrapers Skyscraper office buildings in Singapore Downtown Core (Singapore) 2002 establishments in Singapore Office buildings completed in 2002