Artyzen Singapore

Artyzen Singapore

Cuscaden Road is the quiet, tree-lined stretch just west of where Orchard Road’s malls give out, a few minutes from the embassy district and the UNESCO-listed Singapore Botanic Gardens, and Artyzen Singapore rises from it as a slim tower clad in terracotta custom-perforated aluminium with black steel detailing, its voids filled with greenery. The land has a longer story than the building: it was once Villa Marie, a two-storey colonial-style bungalow bought by Tan Hoon Siang, great-grandson of Tan Tock Seng, the nineteenth-century philanthropist, and one of the last remaining villas in the area, built in the 1940s, with arched columns, tiled courtyards and a history of orchid cultivation that the new building quotes throughout. A Hong Kong property group bought the mansion and its land in 2016, the Singapore practice ONG&ONG designed the tower, and the hotel opened in December 2023 with 142 rooms spanning the 8th to the 20th levels. It is owned and run by Artyzen Hospitality Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Shun Tak Holdings, and Pansy Ho is behind the Artyzen hotels, with Singapore the first property outside Greater China. The interiors are by Nic Graham & Associates, who took their cues from Straits Chinese houses, the geometric patterns and vibrant colours of the Peranakan community, and from the shophouse, which explains the four-metre-high wood-panelled ceilings in each room, the arched French windows and the ceiling fans turning above beds. Rooms start from 42sqm, every one has a balcony, and the 178 sqm Terrace Suites come with landscaped sky terraces; Bang & Olufsen speakers and Dyson dryers do the modern work quietly. The lifts are lined with artwork by local artist Terence Tan depicting the outside of a shophouse, akin to a stained-glass window, and the lobby hangs pieces by Dawn Ang. The serious table is on level four, a fine-dining, degustation-menu-only restaurant called Quenino, co-created by Victor Liong, the Australian chef best known for Melbourne’s two-hatted Lee Ho Fook, with chef de cuisine Sujatha Asokan running the kitchen day to day; the name derives from “little one” in Kristang, the creole Portuguese of the Eurasian community in Penang, Malacca and Singapore. Downstairs, Café Quenino is open from 6.30am to midnight daily, and up top is a 25m cantilevered infinity pool with a glass-bottomed section and underwater speakers, beside a sunken lounge and rooftop bar. Level five holds the gym, treatment rooms and yoga pavilions under a 15-metre-high ceiling. What it feels like is a city hotel that refuses the city hotel’s habits of low ceilings, sealed windows and corridors that could be anywhere, and the result is a building you experience vertically, in green ledges and long sightlines, with the heat and noise of Orchard Road kept at a polite distance. It is a hotel of strong opinions about pattern and colour, and the Peranakan references are loud enough that you notice them on every floor, which some will find generous and others busy. The Michelin Guide has given it one MICHELIN Key, and the dining is the clearest reason to choose it over its newer neighbours on the same road; Quenino is cooking with a point of view about the region, and it is worth arranging an evening around. It also takes dogs seriously, with rooms on level 14 dedicated to dog-friendly stays and a walking lawn by the café, which is unusual in a city this fastidious. You should not come if you want Marina Bay on the skyline, a sprawling resort pool, or a lobby where nobody makes eye contact; the footprint is compact, the rooftop gets lively at sunset, and the design never stops talking. You should come if you want a room with real height and an outdoor space of your own in a city where both are scarce, a walk to the Botanic Gardens before the heat arrives, and one of the more interesting tasting menus in Singapore two floors above the lobby. The short version: A 142-room tower on Cuscaden Road, built by Shun Tak’s Artyzen Hospitality Group on the site of Tan Hoon Siang’s 1940s Villa Marie, with balconies on every room, a 25-metre cantilevered rooftop pool and Victor Liong’s degustation restaurant on the fourth floor.