A vertical village in Singapore is the World Building of the Year

The Interlace, an expansive interlocking network of living and communal spaces, takes the top prize at the World Architecture Festival.

From the Series

Judges at the World Architecture Festival 2015 awarded the top honour – the World Building of the Year – to The Interlace apartment complex in Singapore.

The Interlace was designed by Dutch-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in partnership with Büro Ole Scheeren. The complex is the largest and the most ambitious residential development in Singapore to date.

The large vertical village was crowned World Building of the Year because it departs from Singapore’s standard typology of large, isolated vertical apartments, and the development presents a radically new approach to contemporary living in Singapore’s tropical environment.

The complex is an interlocking network of horizontal apartment blocks, stacked in hexagonal arrangements around eight courtyards. The Interlace has 1 040 apartment units of varying sizes, spread over six storey’s, with extensive outdoor spaces and landscaping

World Architecture Festival director, Paul Finch considers The Interlace to be a  "radical new approach to contemporary living in a tropical environment," and he further celebrated the project for being  “an example of bold, contemporary architectural thinking."

The World Architecture Festival was hosted from 4 November to 6 November and the World Building of the Year award winner was announced at the culmination of the festival. The festival has been held in Singapore for the past four years but it is moving to Berlin in 2016.

Images courtesy of Iwan Baan via Archdaily.