Marina Bay Sands – Art of the Building

A couple of weeks ago I posted about one of our many trips to Singapore where we visited the Gardens by the Bay. We first saw these gardens from the spectacular Marina Bay Sands hotel complex. It is surprising how cheaply you can grab a room if there is no special event on at the hotel. We were fortunate that when we went we got a few nights on the cheap prior to the city revving up for the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix. The building has become a new icon of the city state, and has received a great amount of attention from other bloggers. Its high level design is simple and yet immense in its scale. For someone trying to photograph it, the many lines and curves offer something almost other worldly.

But what struck me more were some of the artistic decorations for the hotel. The simplicity of the buildings design couple with its scale called for decoration that matches this. In some cases, the building itself is the art. Maybe these caught my attention because they were more human in scale than the massive towers and pool deck  the size of an aircraft carrier. I shot these four “pieces” at the hotel for their striking simplicity and their uniqueness. As usual, these images click through to the large photos on my Flickr site.

The first piece shimmered with the wind, making this facade of the building look like a rippling water of metal.

The buildings large towers with their internal split create a fascinating ceiling which is an art piece in itself. The horizontal ‘beams’ are corridors for guests and staff to get from one side of the hotel tower to the other.

 

The high ceilings called for down lights that filled the space. The glass on these lights was something special that only really came alive at night.

 

But I think that I saved my favourite piece for last. This tall, simple water feature kept me fascinated watching the path of water constantly rotate the channels dipping and rising when empty – keeping the sculpture constantly in a state of flux.

 

You may not like it, but the building and its decorative art are stunning and elicit a response. I would like to stay there again at some point in the future to see whether the hotel has stood the test of time.