* DESIGN OF
THE YEAR 2018

The project saw Mediacorp relocate to a site that is a quarter of its original home at Caldecott Hill. How did this reduction in space impact upon the design?

Gary Kamemoto (GK): The old Mediacorp campus had seen a series of patchworks and additions over a period of 50 years. The staff of 3,000 people were housed in a sprawling compound of a dozen low-rise buildings, making it almost operationally impossible to proceed. Therefore, Mediacorp decided to move into Mediapolis at One-North. The small site required us to vertically stack the facilities. What was once a horizontal campus of 12 buildings ended up one on top of the other in a very clear organisational structure. The other challenge was that the building sits on an oblong site derived from Zaha Hadid’s bent grid master plan for One-North. We had to fit 1,000-square metre and 700-square metre studios, which are square in geometry, into a triangular site.

Angelene Chan (AC): I remember when we first went to the old campus, we would be escorted to the rooms and the various meeting places every time because you would definitely get lost. When they moved to this 1.5-hectare site, one of the primary goals was to make sure that circulation is absolutely easy. If you visited broadcast centres in the other parts of the world, you would see that they never have a theatre and broadcast, radio and news studios all housed in one building. One of our challenges was to incorporate everything while keeping them separate, and still inter-connected.

Mediacorp’s previous campus was secluded in a residential estate, but the new building is designed as an attraction in an upcoming media hub. There is a public theatre and even a tour route where visitors can see the inner workings of media production. What drove the desire to open up the building?

GK: It is important to highlight that this project came out of an international competition and not a commission. Seven firms were invited to participate and four were international firms. It was very clear on the outset that Mediacorp desired a new idea for a broadcast centre. This was particularly apt because our first project in Singapore, which we also collaborated with Angelene and DP Architects, was Republic Polytechnic. The building received the Design of the Year at the 2009 President*s Design Award, and it was recognised for its social value and introducing a new type of learning experience.

Although Mediacorp Campus is a different kind of building, the client had a social agenda which resonates with our design philosophy. When they awarded us the project, we noted that their jury selected us on two counts: ours was the only scheme that met their operational needs and we were the only ones that provided seamless public engagement. The merit of our scheme is not based upon just what meets the eye.

The biggest component of the public engagement is this unique tour route that goes inside of the centre of Mediacorp’s operations. Typically, a broadcast centre does not allow the public to enter its premises. But we saw a potential for broadcast activities to be an attraction. Mediacorp’s product is entertainment, education and information, but how that is being created is fascinating for the public to see too. While some broadcasters open up to a limited amount, Mediacorp has embraced this throughout the entire facility.

The building also connects to an adjacent public park. How did the site’s surroundings shape the campus design?

GK: Often times, broadcast centres are an industrial building type which are very closed off to the public. The location of Mediacorp is next to a 2.2-hectare park, the biggest in the master plan of Mediapolis. This was a tremendous opportunity to conceive the broadcast centre and the park as one. We immediately discussed with the National Parks Board to see if they would embrace this. What made it challenging to design the building with the park is that it is raised 7.5 metres above ground level. Underneath the park are the support and carpark facilities for the entire district.

Ideally, one would want to have direct access at ground level to the broadcast centre because it has a lot of heavy duty services and also a theatre that will have many props coming in and out for live shows. Due to the constraints of the site, we created a service spine that goes all the way through from north to south. Because the park is raised, all the services, which are hugging the edge of the park, will not be visible at all. That’s a tremendous advantage of integrating with this particular park.

AC: We are very privileged to be located adjacent to this wonderful park. The park enabled us to sprawl some activities to this green area. Events that are held in the building could spread over to the park. Although it is not our land, it was a wonderful opportunity to design for a larger piece of land. In thinking of the park as a public space, there is a radio broadcast booth facing the park on the fourth floor so that deejays can play songs and people can watch them from below. All that public engagement has been designed into the building.

Beyond just a more efficient media complex, Mediacorp wanted to create a more collaborative space for its employees. How does the building enable its staff to function as a “vertical media city”?

GK: Mediacorp has 48 different productions, through broadcast, radio, press, and digital media. If you can imagine 48 teams spread out in 12 different buildings, it was quite a balkanised environment in Caldecott Hill. In this day and age, collaboration is a buzzword, but it really works. Coming into contact with your co-workers as much as possible to share information and come up with good ideas—it is where the world is going right now. This is exactly what Mediacorp set out to do in its new campus.

Obviously, to get 3,000 people in one big space was very difficult physically. For the Corporate Office, we maxmised the site area over four floors. But if you create separate floors, you don’t create this “oneness” which Mediacorp was very passionate about. To achieve a collaborative work environment in a singular space, we created a very large atrium in the centre of each floor such that the office is like a doughnut or a circle—it doesn’t have a start and end. Mediacorp then came up with the hot desking concept so that no one owns a particular area. Such a space means the staff are always mingling and departments are always changing. This resonates with the premise of this building which is designed for an organisation that is simultaneously changing too.

A broadcast centre has many engineering requirements, such as hosting infrastructure in a secure environment. How did the team balance the industrial nature of the building while creating an iconic piece of architecture?