Overview of the masterplan
The Mount Nice website, earmarked for residential improvement within the City Redevelopment Authority’s Grasp Plan since 1998, covers some 33 hectares and was the long-standing house of the Outdated Police Academy (OPA) from 1929 till 2005.
After detailed heritage and environmental research, and consultations with heritage teams equivalent to Singapore Heritage Society, All Issues Bukit Brown, and Heritage Advisory Panel, and the police fraternity, HDB’s refined masterplan now anticipates about 6,000 new HDB flats throughout 4 initiatives.
The plan displays a twin ambition: to develop the provision and variety of public housing whereas fastidiously integrating the positioning’s distinctive constructed and social heritage into a up to date, walkable property.
The primary Construct-To-Order launch, Mount Nice Crest, is scheduled for October 2025 and can provide roughly 1,350 flats starting from two-room Flexi models to four-room flats. The venture may even embody roughly 270 public rental flats as a part of a broader strategy to fulfill totally different housing wants and budgets.
Heritage conservation and adaptive reuse
Heritage has been central to the masterplan from the outset. Six buildings on the OPA website have been recognized by a heritage research as most consultant of the academy’s architectural, social and policing historical past. These buildings have been conserved exactly due to their historic significance and their capability to anchor a brand new property with a recognisable identification.
Of the conserved blocks, Block 1 and Block 2 have been the academy’s administrative buildings and offered the backdrop for commencement ceremonies and parade floor occasions. Block 1 is deliberate to be repurposed as a Neighbourhood Police Submit accompanied by a Singapore Police Power heritage gallery, providing a public face for the positioning’s policing historical past.
Blocks 27 and 28 are colonial-style bungalows traditionally used as senior officers’ lodging; they characteristic a butterfly-shaped semi-detached plan with full-length verandahs and have been designed for tropical consolation whereas displaying clear English-style architectural roots.
The businesses concerned are finding out appropriate neighborhood or industrial makes use of for these bungalows in order that their kind and character are conserved but usefully built-in into property life.
Block 153, in-built 1931, will proceed to function the Senior Police Officers’ Mess; it sits outdoors the speedy property boundary however stays a part of the broader heritage cloth.
Equally, Block 13; initially a clinic and hospital ward constructed in 1928 in a plantation-house fashion with verandahs and timber shutters for pure air flow, lies simply outdoors the property boundary and is slated to be built-in into future developments.
The excellence between buildings inside and simply outdoors permits the architects to preserve the historic campus as a contextual entire whereas permitting the brand new housing precincts to nestle round it.
Repurposing bodily components
Conservation at Mount Nice extends past entire buildings to the cautious salvaging and artistic reuse of structural components. The steel trusses and supporting columns of the outdated drill shed, as soon as the venue for foot drills, medal ceremonies and band performances, have been intentionally dismantled and secured in order that they could possibly be repurposed within the new precinct pavilion.
Staff have used scissor lifts and heavy-lift cranes to extract the trusses and stabilise them for reassembly. This advanced engineering operation helps maintain a tangible hyperlink to the academy’s coaching life.
Equally, six starter blocks from the Olympic-size swimming pool, which was opened in 1977 by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and utilized by trainees, officers and their households, have been retained and cleaned to be used as mounted seating on the drop-off porch in Mount Nice Crest.
These three-dimensional fragments of the academy’s on a regular basis life can be seen, tactile reminders of the positioning’s social historical past. The reused components can be built-in into on a regular basis communal areas in order that heritage is skilled reasonably than merely noticed.
Discover a house close to Mount Nice
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Design and sustainability
Design cues drawn from the Outdated Police Academy’s colonial-tropical structure are central to the property’s visible identification.
Clay-coloured pitched roofs, white-painted columns, louvred air flow particulars, latticed panels and archways will recur throughout precincts, making a coherent architectural language that nods to the positioning’s previous.
The masterplan additionally introduces an “city verandah”, outlined as a sheltered, pedestrian-friendly thoroughfare that hyperlinks precincts and creates comfy, shaded routes for strolling and biking. The city verandah is each a sensible response to Singapore’s local weather and a conceptual echo of the verandahs that characterise the conserved bungalows and institutional buildings.
Environmental research have knowledgeable block orientation and structure in order that pure air flow is prioritised and photo voltaic warmth achieve is minimised the place possible. A retained hillock between conserved Blocks 27 and 28 can be reimagined as a neighborhood inexperienced house, forming an area landmark and leisure hub. Tree-lined north-south spines, pocket parks and beneficiant planting all through the property will create ecology-rich corridors for residents.
At unit degree, properties can be geared up with provisions to allow good house techniques that assist vitality effectivity. At property degree, car parking will accommodate electrical car charging factors and bicycle parking can be offered to encourage low-carbon transport.
The place required, additional environmental modelling equivalent to wind move, temperature and solar-shadow evaluation, will information microclimatic choices within the detailed design stage.
Connectivity, facilities and neighbourhood hyperlinks
Mount Nice is deliberate as a well-connected, car-lite property. A brand new Mount Nice MRT station on the Thomson-East Coast Line will serve residents immediately, whereas new roads, bus providers and Transit Precedence Corridors will assist environment friendly public transport.
Pedestrian pathways and an intensive community of biking routes will knit the property to Toa Payoh and the inexperienced corridors that result in MacRitchie Reservoir, making lively journey an interesting alternative.
In time, residents will profit from retail and eating choices, and well being and transport providers. The forthcoming Toa Payoh built-in improvement will add retailers, a polyclinic, a library, a city park and sports activities amenities inside simple attain.
One of many essential thoroughfares within the new property will bear the identify Outdated Police Academy Street, a deliberate act that enhances present gazetted roads equivalent to Onraet Street and Wong Chin Yoke Street.
Neighborhood and cultural continuity
The masterplan is attentive to how on a regular basis life will unfold within the shadow of the academy’s historical past. The parade sq., as soon as the focus for drill and ceremony, can be retained as public open house in order that the spatial reminiscence of the OPA stays legible inside the new property.
The retention and repurposing of bodily artefacts, and the naming of key streets are small acts that assist form an extended public narrative and on a regular basis rituals. These interventions will be certain that Mount Nice shouldn’t be merely one other addition to Singapore’s housing inventory.
The property illustrates how historical past and reminiscence might be preserved with out stopping up to date makes use of and neighborhood life. When the primary flats at Mount Nice Crest open within the mid-2020s, the property will already carry the lived traces of the Outdated Police Academy into a brand new chapter of public housing for Singapore.
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