Extending a hospital without interrupting its care

As demand for private healthcare in Singapore continued to grow, Raffles Medical Group set out to expand its flagship hospital with a new medical tower on the adjacent site. The brief was demanding in a way unique to healthcare architecture: to add significant new capacity, services, and technology while the existing hospital around it continued to operate without pause. We were appointed as architects for the extension, an integrated medical complex designed to carry the hospital into its next chapter.

Rather than introduce a competing form, the design draws directly from the volumetric language of the existing Raffles Hospital. The extension is composed of two L-shaped volumes that interlock to form a single elegant tower, embraced by the original building and connected to it through an elevated green area. The result reads not as an addition bolted on, but as a natural extension of an institution that was always designed to grow.

The new complex was conceived to support the full breadth of Raffles Hospital's work: an expanded range of specialist services, advanced medical technology, healthcare training, and clinical research, with capacity deliberately held in reserve for the growth still to come. Every decision about how the building is organised serves that single ambition, to give the hospital room to do more, for more people, over the decades ahead.

The design treats environmental performance and patient wellbeing as the same concern. A Low-E glass facade minimises heat gain and the energy required to cool the building, and the atrium is naturally lit. Green walls and roof gardens cleanse the air, soften the experience for patients, and reduce the building's heat load, while the carpark is naturally ventilated and water-efficient fixtures and rain-sensor irrigation manage consumption throughout. The extension was awarded Green Mark Platinum certification by Singapore's Building and Construction Authority, recognition that a healing environment and a sustainable one can be the same building.