Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

FLUID DYNAMIC

The look of Masan’s new Singapore

office seems to shimmer and change

right before your eyes, reflecting

both the company’s fast-moving

character and its heritage.

Seen to the left of this image, an example of one of the

office’s columns – with a section of its contemporary exterior

peeled back to reveal a vista of Ho Chi Minh City beneath

Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

Centred above the reception area’s water feature is the Masan logo –

deconstructed into individual sculptural pieces along an eight-metre depth

so that it ‘explodes’ or ‘reassembles’ according to one’s perspective.

Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

Covering two-thirds of the front-of-house floor area yet only 1mm in depth, the water

feature is a shimmering evocation of Masan’s origins in the Mekong River region.

Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

The office’s boardroom is encased in a simple glass box, and

sits atop a ‘raft’ floating on its stunning water feature.

Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

Fit and finish for this striking design is breathtakingly precise, with just 3mm

separating the reception’s floor surface from the edge of the water feature.

Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

Floor-to-ceiling transparent glass is used for the office’s internal divisions, ensuring visual

connections from space to space, and opening the splendid external views to all.

Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

The workspace is undivided and open, with widely-spaced chevron-shaped workstations

adding an element of visual dynamism to an otherwise minimalist environment.

Masan Group OUE Bayfront, Singapore 5,500 square feet

It is an office where columns peel back to reveal glimpses of a city;

where the conference table floats like a raft on its own lake; where

logos explode and reassemble according to where the viewer is

standing.

In some respects, this workplace – the first international office of

Masan, a Vietnam-based holding company – sounds more

dreamscape than workscape. But get beyond the initial surreal

impressions and a solid logic emerges. This office is all about

connection – to a way of working, to people, and to the soul of the

company itself.

An unusual brief

Masan, whose interests lie in banking, mining and food, conceived

of their Singapore office partly to bring Masan to the world, and

partly to bring the world to them, as well as serving as a showcase

to a world still generally unfamiliar with their brand, the office

would be a first point of contact for individuals aspiring

to join this vigorously young and unconventional firm.

With Masan’s operations becoming increasingly international, the

office would also be a convenient part-time base for the CEO and

partners. This necessitated the inclusion of a conference room and

two smaller meeting spaces in the design. Other functional

necessities in the brief were an open-plan work space for

approximately 10 staff, and a small number of enclosed offices.

The site selected was a 5,500 square feet, 9th floor space in OUE

Bayfront, located in Singapore’s prestigious Marina Bay. Selected to

create the design was M Moser Associates, who began the process

with an intensive collaboration with Masan to discover in detail how

its people worked, and the essence of the company’s background.

Impressions in depth

The finished design makes its impression the moment one steps

out of the lift. The reception area is expansive, with two-thirds of its

area covered by a shimmering water feature. Hovering above it is

three-dimensional rendering of the Masan logo – actually

deconstructed into discrete sculptural elements installed in series

along an eight metre depth. As a result, the logo seems to

‘disassemble’ when viewed from any perspective but head-on.

Also floating on the water feature is the conference room, a simple

transparent glass-encased space atop a timber ‘raft’. The water

feature – as well as the office’s outside view over the bay – refer

directly to Masan’s origins in Ho Chi Minh City along the Mekong

River. Here, the design’s painstaking attention to detail and finish is

at its most impressive: to make a near-seamless transition between

floor and water, just 3mm separating the two elements.

The same origins are literally just below the surface everywhere in

this otherwise contemporary, sharply-defined environment.

Structural columns throughout the space feature ‘peeled back’

sections inset with multilayered, brilliant blue-tinted satellite images

of Ho Chi Minh City. As well as providing a constant reminder

of the firm’s heritage, their vividness also adds bursts of energetic

colour to a palette dominated by the neutral hues of wood and

stone, and the icy transparency of glass.