Storeys From The City

Husband and wife architect team Khoo Peng Beng and Belinda Huang have helped to redefine Singapore’s skyline – most notably with a series of high-density high rises that maximise human engagement and interaction with ecology.

- Jonathan Evans

Soft spoken yet effervescent, bang on schedule and beaming widely, Khoo Peng Beng strolls into the bijou HQ of his and his wife Belinda Huang’s practice Arc Studio Architecture + Urbanism in Singapore’s fashionable Jalan Besar. At 47, though looking a decade younger, he appears every bit the trendy professor in his thin-rimmed specs and green shirt liberally specked with pastel-coloured flowers – his outfit almost a literal representation of the aesthetic focus and environmental ideology that drive the firm’s work.

Though Khoo and Huang have since helmed a vast panoply of initiatives both in Singapore and overseas, one of their first blueprints remains ARC’s most famous. In 2002, as relative upstarts, he and Huang took the Duxton Plain Public Housing Design Competition by storm with a monumentally ambitious entry that redefined the potential of public residential projects. Their proposal, the groundbreaking The Pinnacle@Duxton, was selected over 201 worldwide entries. Both the city’s first 50-storey residential development and the world’s tallest public-housing building, it also features the world’s longest sky gardens. A landmark by any yardstick, it still dominates Chinatown’s skyline eight years after completion.

Ordinarily, one might associate this kind of monolith with more ebullient characters, but Khoo and Huang remain remarkably reserved and modest despite their many accomplishments

“We were just fortunate we asked the right questions,” says Khoo of their Duxton win.

What made you and Belinda leave your first company and set up your own practice?