Jewel Changi Airport Safdie Architects | Concepts & Projects

Jewel represents an innovation in the world of lifestyle / retail design with a one-of-a-kind relationship between garden and marketplace. Jewel Changi Airport re-imagines the center of an airport as a major public realm attraction. It offers a range of facilities for landside airport operations, indoor gardens and leisure attractions, retail offerings and hotel facilities, all under one roof.

Where Nature Meets Retail

Jewel Changi Airport re-imagines the center of an airport as a major public realm attraction. Jewel offers a range of facilities for landside airport operations, indoor gardens and leisure attractions, retail offerings and hotel facilities, all under one roof. Changi Airport welcomes visitors with its distinctive dome-shaped facade made of glass and steel.

Based on the geometry of a torus, the building is designed as a new central connector between the existing airport terminals at Singapore Changi Airport. At its core is the Forest Valley, a terraced garden attraction that offers many spatial and interactive experiences for visitors. The Forest Valley also includes walking trails, cascading waterfalls, and quiet seating areas. Surrounding the gardens is a multi-level retail marketplace on five levels, which features access to the garden via a series of vertical canyons.

At the apex of Jewel’s glass roof is an oculus that showers water down to the center of the building. The Rain Vortex, as a tall indoor waterfall, transforming into a light and sound show in the evening. During the region’s frequent and powerful thunderstorms, recirculated, natural rainwater flows at more than 10,000 gallons per minute, which helps provide cooling and airflow in the landscape environment, collecting significant rainwater to be re-used in the building.

Jewel represents an innovation in the world of lifestyle / retail design, with a one-of-a-kind relationship between garden and marketplace. The building extends Changi Airport’s principal function as a transit hub, to a public gathering space for Singaporeans and international travelers, establishing a new model for airports as discrete destinations for shopping, entertainment, and social activity.

On the 5th level is the Canopy Park, which includes 14,000 square meters of attractions integrated within the garden spaces. These include net structures suspended within the trees, a suspended catenary glass-bottom bridge walk, a planted hedge maze and mirror maze, and feature installations completed in collaboration with internationally acclaimed artists. There is also a topiary walk and other horticultural displays. On the north side of the park is an event plaza space big enough to serve 1,000 people.

The building extends Changi Airport’s principal function as a transit hub, to a public gathering space for Singaporeans and international travelers, establishing a new model for airports as discrete destinations for shopping, entertainment, and social activity.

Conceived to serve the people of Singapore and travelers equally, the building is directly connected to the Changi Bus Terminal and the airport’s Terminal 1. It is also accessible from Terminals 2 and 3 via pedestrian bridges, and the interterminal train crosses through the gardens, giving visitors with limited time a glimpse into the Forest Valley.

For its efforts towards the creation of an environmentally sustainable building, Jewel received the Green Mark Award – GoldPLUS award from Singapore’s Building & Construction Authority. The building’s efficient displacement ventilation system regulates the thermal comfort for occupants as well as the vast array of interior planting within.