Singapore Towers to Be World’s Tallest Modular Buildings

A two-tower residential project planned for a site on the western edge of Singapore’s urban core will be notable as the world’s tallest modular-constructed buildings, Architectural Digest reported in July. The 56-story towers, known as Avenue South Residences, will be built with a process called prefabricated, prefinished volumetric construction (PPVC). Semi-finished apartment modules will be manufactured offsite at factories in Singapore and Malaysia and brought to the 5.6-acre site, where they will be stacked like building blocks to create a total of 988 condominium units. Many of the details of the units, such as bathroom and kitchen fixtures, will be installed in the modules before they leave their factories.

Industry observers and experts point to advantages of PPVC, including reduced construction time and costs, and the reduced need for onsite labor. Markus Cheng, an associate of ADDP Architects, the firm overseeing Avenue South Residences, said the process is especially useful in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, because social distancing is easier to implement: “When you build in a factory, you minimize workers having to work at height. You also don’t have lots of workers mingling around taking an elevator up 40 stories.” Avenue South Residences is scheduled for completion in 2026.