DP Architects practices as a multidisciplinary design group, One Global Studio, with 900 staff, 16 strategically linked international offices from Shanghai to London, 8 associated specialist companies, with a reach of 77 countries around the world.
As the practice of architecture becomes broader and more encompassing, DP recognises the potential of specialisation in our pursuit of a holistic design solution. DP provides a suite of integrated design services through our specialist consultancies:
An understanding of the needs of the people we are designing for is essential to creating a built environment that is purposeful and liveable. This lies at the core of each and every one of DP’s design work.
Our design work benefits from the close collaboration and synergy among the various disciplines to strengthen our delivery of fully coordinated, context-appropriate and innovative design solutions. Our headquarters in Singapore houses the specialist companies and 10 typology research teams that perform as a consolidated resource for our designers around the world. With diversified talents and extensive specialist knowledge, our interdisciplinary approach is driven by a common design belief and methodology.
Founded in 1967 on a deep concern for the built environment and the need to create architecture of excellence that enriches the human experience and spirit, DP continues to play a role in shaping cityscapes in Singapore, Asia, the Middle East and beyond. Driven by a strong philosophy devoted to human activity and civic quality of the city, our designers approach each project as the continuation of an ongoing exploration in shaping the public domain. In our pursuit to improve the lives of people in cities, DP explores design techniques that inject new vitality into the city’s fabric. Our projects serve as regional focal points, hubs of human activity and social space.
With a site area of 34 hectares, gross floor area of 550,000sqm and 23km of shopfronts – The Dubai Mall is one of the largest shopping malls in the world and one of the world’s most visited leisure destination. Conceptualised as a ‘city within a city’, The Dubai Mall is divided into eight precincts of different characters and designed with nodes, internal streets and façades for legibility.
DP has been involved with urban projects of immense scale and increasing diversity of function; some of the firm’s works are the largest of their type in the world.
DPA has a long history in a wide variety of projects remarkable in its diversity of scale and typology.
To further deepen the critical understanding and appreciation of the profession, DP has formed 10 building typology research groups to generate research and develop expertise in key design typologies – namely, Retail and Mixed Development; Residential; Healthcare; Hospitality; Civic, Community, Sports & Art; Commercial & Office; Education; Transport Infrastructure Architecture; Theme Parks; and Urban Planning.
These 10 dedicated focus groups research developments in technology, techniques, trends and user need of their identified typology and develop architectural design unique to the typology. A newly formed Design Intelligence department further contributes to the exploration and research into areas of new hybrid typologies, digital prototyping and advanced geometry.
This concerted endeavour reinforces the practice’s creative process and focus on specialisation, and is further aided by a robust support network of departments such as Design, Documentation and Specification, Contracts and Practice and Code Compliance and Quality.
Our practice began in Singapore in 1967 as Design Partnership, just two years after the country’s independence following a century of British rule. Koh Seow Chuan, William SW Lim and Tay Kheng Soon set up the practice at a time when the young nation was struggling with teething problems including a dire need for major infrastructural developments. With an aspiration “to produce an architecture that uplifts the human spirit”, the studio of 15 practised consensus-based design to deliver solutions for socially relevant spaces that improved the lives of people in cities. The Deed of Partnership embraces the founders’ shared ideals and values; these cornerstones upon which the firm was built continue to guide us to this day.
With an aspiration “to produce an architecture that uplifts the human spirit”, DP practises consensus-based design to deliver solutions for socially relevant spaces that improved the lives of people in cities.
The architectural scene in Singapore in the late 1960s and early 1970s was transformed by government invitations for private sector participation in the country’s renewal programme. It was during this period that DP completed the People’s Park Complex and the Golden Mile Complex – these two projects introduced Singapore to new modes of modernist architecture, private-public programming of unprecedented scale, and a series of innovative public spaces.
In 1975 Design Partnership was renamed DP Architects, led by partners Koh Seow Chuan, William Lim, Gan Eng Oon and Chan Sui Him; Tay Kheng Soon had left the partnership during a transition in 1974. With new leadership came expansion and growth. By the early 1980s, the reputation of DP Architects was firmly established. The firm had gained considerable peer recognition and garnered numerous design awards, and the practice was recognised for its capacity to deliver high-quality, large-scale projects. Our works were innovative and socially meaningful and had helped Singapore’s architecture evolve beyond the stranglehold of a colonial legacy. We had helped give rise to a new tropical regionalism.
Through the 1980s a new generation of directors became groomed for leadership. The belief that collective strength is more important than individual talent continues to guide the firm. This new set of leaders – Francis Lee, Ti Lian Seng, Vikas Gore, Wu Tzu Chiang and Teoh Hai Pin and later Chin Thoe Chong, Angelene Chan, Lesley Lim and Dadi Surya – possessed a shared design approach aimed at enriching the lives and experiences of people; in this way, we formed a continuum in our philosophy and design methodologies from the 1960s.