Sunray Headquarters’ Win at President’s Design Award Featured in Local News

Well-established local dailies The Straits Times and The Business Times featured Sunray Headquarters’ win (Design of the Year) at President’s Design Award 2015 in their 12 December 2015 weekend editions.

Sunray Headquarters was one of 13 projects to win this award, conferred by the President of the Republic of Singapore, Dr Tony Tan, and recognised in Singapore as the highest symbol of excellence for design.

The Business Times highlighted Sunray Headquarters as an outstanding, bright yellow building that is unexpected in the Sungei Kadut industrial area. It cited the project’s lead architect, Angelene Chan, on how the building’s unique, interconnected, stacked box design raises the bar for industrial buildings in the surrounding area, and is a striking design statement befitting the pride that the client, Sunray, has in their craft.

The Straits Times noted that the highly visible Sunray Headquarters is no stranger to awards, having been commended by the architecture fraternity for being an atypical industrial building, alluding to its win at the 14th Singapore Institute of Architects’ Architectural Design Awards in 2014.

The successful concept of the project lies in its seamless yet clearly articulated manner of merging five different office, factory and lodging functions within a single eight-storey building. The project commercially optimises factory production and business processes while balancing the need for an uplifting workspace situated in a cheerless industrial estate, by locating production space, workers’ dormitories, warehouse, offices and showrooms in ‘stacked boxes’.

As part of the awards, the judges called Sunray Headquarters “a ray of light in a drab industrial area”. They commended the seamless workflow of spaces with varying functions, and praised the design as a “refreshing and cheery interpretation of the industrial factory building… a welcome departure from the norm that provides a benchmark for future developments of this kind”. Sunray Headquarters is an example of excellence in design that balances efficiency for a client, a living community’s needs and aesthetic appeal.