Sustainable Design: Holiday Inn Express Orchard Road Earns Green Mark Platinum

Holiday Inn Express Singapore Orchard Road, designed by JGP Architecture, received the BCA Green Mark Platinum Award, the top tier of the Building and Construction Authority's certification scheme for environmental sustainability in buildings. The 16-storey, 221-room hotel sits at 20 Bideford Road, within walking distance of ION Orchard, Ngee Ann City, Mount Elizabeth Hospital and the Somerset and Orchard MRT stations, and opened to guests in July 2013.

The design pairs a compact hotel footprint with a chic, contemporary street presence: window frames are picked out in blue lighting visible from Orchard Road, concrete columns at the drop-off are finished in granite, and the facade incorporates a green wall. A Green Mark Platinum rating reflects performance across energy efficiency, water efficiency and indoor environmental quality, benchmarks that carry particular weight for a hotel operating in Singapore's dense, high-traffic retail belt.