Treehouse@SG: Three Pixelated Towers Grown from Singapore's Pedestrian Paths for Digital Nomads

A digital nomad's day rarely respects the line between bedroom, desk and café, yet most cities still build as if it does. Treehouse@SG starts from that mismatch and proposes an architecture that behaves like a tree rather than a tower: something that grows, branches, shelters and supports many forms of life at once. Its central idea is simple and well judged. If home, work and leisure have already collapsed into one another, the building should stop pretending they are separate.

Designed by Keith Lim, Chng Kai Jiunn, Diane Lee and Ashley Chen, the project was recognised as an Editor's Choice entry in NomadHouse 2020. Set in the dense urban fabric of Singapore, it gathers living, working, recreation, learning, commerce, technology and public life into a single vertically connected ecosystem, organised around the designers' shorthand of Live, Work and Play.

A Tree as an Inhabitable Framework, Not a Metaphor on the Facade

The narrow lounge, with its facing sofas, low table and pendant lamps beneath a timber ceiling, shows the scale at which the tree idea actually lands. This is not a symbolic trunk or a leafy silhouette. It is a set of intimate rooms where conversation sits next to work, and where the warmth of timber softens the transience that defines nomadic living. The designers borrow from the tree its capacity to change with seasons and support many occupants at once, then translate that into rooms that can host a meeting in the afternoon and a quiet evening by dusk.

The value here is in refusing programme stacking. Residential units sit alongside offices, gardens, communal areas and commercial space, and activities stay visible to one another. Circulation becomes a chance to meet someone rather than a corridor to get through.

Pixelated Massing Breaks the Tower into Rooms with a View

The sectional rendering of four stacked timber-lined rooms, each framing the skyline through a full-height window, is the clearest evidence of the project's form-finding sequence. The scheme begins with existing pedestrian movement across the site, whose diagonal pathways generate three principal towers. Those towers are then tuned through view optimisation and broken down through pixelation into smaller volumetric units. Residential portions take on sloping profiles, producing a stepped skyline instead of a flat, uniform elevation.

What reads from afar as a cluster of fragmented volumes resolves, up close, into individual rooms, each with its own aspect. For residents who may stay weeks rather than years, that sense of a personal frame on the city matters more than square footage.

A Ground Plane That Belongs to the Public First

The courtyard, with timber benches, lawn and trees beneath crossing diagonal beams, and the ground-level view of shopfronts below planted terraces, make the case that this is not a gated residential block. The project names three programmatic conditions: public square, office spaces and residential spaces. The public square comes first, with plazas and landscaped gathering areas replacing the usual sealed entrance lobby.

Those diagonal beams overhead are worth noticing. They echo the pedestrian desire lines that generated the massing in the first place, so the geometry of the towers is still legible where people walk. A cyclist carrying a bike through the courtyard and people crossing the lawn at midday suggest a site stitched into the city's daily movement rather than set apart from it.

Bridges and Exposed Stairs Turn Circulation into Shared Space

The glazed facade with timber floors, exposed stairs and a glass bridge shows the final step of the concept: linking the three primary blocks through a network of bridges and shared spaces. By putting movement on display, the design lets residents, office workers and passers-by see each other in motion. It is a modest strategy with a real social payoff, especially for a population of newcomers who need low-pressure ways to encounter neighbours.

After Dark, the Courtyard Becomes a Market

The night rendering, with paper lanterns, red string lights, a timber deck and people lingering by market stalls, extends the project's argument across the clock. The same courtyard that serves as a midday shortcut becomes an evening gathering space with commerce woven in. It is a nod to the informal, food-centred public life that Singapore does well, and it gives the building's commercial programme a convivial rather than purely retail character.

Why This Project Matters

Many proposals for digital nomads stop at co-living units with a co-working floor attached. Treehouse@SG goes further by deriving its form from the city around it: pedestrian paths shape the towers, views shape the massing, and bridges and courtyards turn the gaps between buildings into the main event. The tree analogy earns its place because it is applied as a process of growth and connection, not as decoration.

The proposal's open questions are the right ones to ask next, from how pixelated units might adapt as residents change to how the public ground plane is managed over time. Still, the team has set out a convincing direction: for a generation whose lives no longer fit fixed categories, the most useful building may be one that keeps its edges porous and its spaces shared.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Keith Lim, Chng Kai Jiunn, Diane Lee, Ashley Chen

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Project credits: Treehouse@SG by Keith Lim, Chng Kai Jiunn, Diane Lee, Ashley Chen NomadHouse 2020 (uni.xyz).