Parkview Square: The Most Expensive Wall in Singapore

Do you work in Singapore’s Gotham City? Just how rich is the building’s owner to have created this shrine to the arts?

Have you ever noticed a walled-in building with an elaborate Art Deco façade along North Bridge Road, next to Bugis MRT station? From the outside, it looks like a museum or art gallery, but this beautiful building – Parkview Square – is actually a commercial office complex!

Apparently, the late owner of Parkview Square was an admirer of the arts and hence the buildings he’s developed, be they offices or hotels, feature exteriors with intricate details as well as interiors filled with priceless artwork. In fact, the 12-metre high wine tower of the famous Divine bar in Parkview Square cost over $10 million to build! It’s certainly worth visiting for a drink.

If you explore Parkview Square in greater depth, you’ll find that it’s not just a “pretty face”: entering the grounds feels like entering another world. Every inch of the place, from the granite walls to the carved motifs and sleek interiors, is incredibly ornate. This building is truly one of the most artistic commercial office buildings in Singapore.

Parkview Square’s exterior is mostly sandy yellow in colour, which some have surmised to be representative of the owner’s surname. (No prizes for getting this right. Come on, how many Chinese surnames are related to the colour yellow?) From a feng shui angle, however, the building’s colour represents the Earth element, which is mutually generative with the strong Metal element produced by The Gateway nearby. Furthermore, this earthy yellow also represents steadiness, so Parkview Square acts like a steady mountain absorbing the negative qi from the “Killer Blades” of The Gateway.

If you head to Parkview Square and determine its orientation, you’ll find that it faces Southeast (Xun bearing) and Northwest (Qian bearing). Xun (Southeast) represents the number 4, which – look up now – reveals itself in the form of 4 fibreglass statues holding light balls on both sides of the building’s crown. It may also represent the 4 brothers of Chyau Fwu Group, who own the building.

How to determine the direction?

For further proof that Parkview Square’s owners believe in feng shui, just look to the golden crane statue in the front courtyard of the building (facing Qian, or Northwest). The crane, ready to take off, is facing China in the north – this is evident usage of feng shui’s Castle Gate tactic.

To end off, we’d like to share this poem inscribed on the base of Parkview Square’s golden crane statue:

Huang He Lou (Yellow Crane Tower)
For the Yellow Crane Tower of my homeland,
I have looked north for thousands of years.
The Yellow Crane wings its way across thousands of miles,
So the great Lion City can know the Tower.