A rally speech, a competition and a flower used as a map, 2005–2012.

Gardens by the Bay is a public park made of three waterfront gardens in central Singapore, laid out beside the Marina Reservoir. Wikipedia says the project was announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the National Day Rally in 2005, as part of a national plan to move Singapore from a “Garden City” to a “City in a Garden” by adding greenery and flora to the city. The three parts are Bay South, Bay East and Bay Central, and Bay South, at 54 hectares, is the garden that opened in 2012 and the one that holds the conservatories and the Supertrees.

The design was won in open contest. Wikipedia says an international competition for the park was held in 2006, and that two British firms, Grant Associates and Gustafson Porter, were awarded the contracts for Bay South and Bay East respectively. Dezeen, reporting on the completed garden on 19 June 2012, said a team led by the Bath-based landscape architects Grant Associates had been appointed in 2006 by the National Parks Board of Singapore to masterplan Bay South. The British team it listed included Wilkinson Eyre as architects, Atelier Ten as environmental design consultants, Atelier One as structural engineers, Land Design Studio as museum and visitor centre designers and Thomas Matthews as communication designers.

The plan itself borrows the shape of a flower. Wikipedia says Grant Associates took its master plan from the orchid, chosen because it represents the tropics and Singapore, whose national flower is the hybrid Vanda ‘Miss Joaquim’. In that reading the orchid takes root at the waterfront in the conservatories; the leaves are the landforms, the shoots are the paths, roads and linkways, and the secondary roots are the water, energy and communication lines, with the blooms, the theme gardens and the Supertrees, placed at key intersections. Grant Associates says on its own project page that the gardens express the beauty of orchid flowers while the infrastructure for managing energy, water and waste follows the plant’s physiology.

Bay South opened to the public on 29 June 2012, the date Dezeen gave in its report that month and the one Wikipedia records. Wikipedia says Bay East closed in 2023 for a redevelopment tied to the Founders’ Memorial, due to open at the end of 2028, while Bay Central links the two as a waterfront promenade.

Steel trees, two shells of glass and a show after dark.

The Supertrees rise over the middle of Bay South. Wikipedia describes 18 tree-like structures between 25 and 50 metres tall, conceived and designed by Grant Associates with engineering by Atelier One and Atelier Ten, and planted as vertical gardens with ferns, vines, orchids and bromeliads. Dezeen wrote in 2012 that the plants grow up a vein-like cladding, that the structures are linked by bridges 20 metres up with a bar at the top of the tallest, and that each one contains rainwater collection tanks and pumps that cool both the tree and the two greenhouses beside it.

The grove is also a stage. Wikipedia says an elevated walkway, the OCBC Skyway, runs between two of the larger Supertrees, and that a coordinated light and music show called Garden Rhapsody runs twice each evening. The Supertree Observatory, inside the tallest 50-metre tree, opened on 27 December 2019 with an indoor level and an open-air rooftop deck.

The two conservatories sit at the water’s edge. Wikipedia names them the Flower Dome, about 1.2 hectares and holding a cool-dry Mediterranean climate, and the Cloud Forest, about 0.8 hectares, which recreates the cool, moist conditions of tropical mountains between 1,000 and 3,000 metres. Inside the Cloud Forest a 42-metre “Cloud Mountain”, clad in orchids, ferns, bromeliads and anthuriums, is climbed by lift and walked down along a circular path that crosses beneath its waterfall. Dezeen called the pair shell-shaped greenhouses. WilkinsonEyre says each has a composite structure of a gridshell working with an external frame of radially arranged, arched steel ribs, added to take lateral loads, and that the ribs also give the buildings their organic look.

The planting is organised into stories. In the Flower Dome, Wikipedia says, a flower field hosts six to eight themed displays a year, built around plants such as dahlias, tulips and roses. Outdoors, two sets of themed gardens frame the visit: the Heritage Gardens, with Indian, Chinese, Malay and Colonial gardens about the plants of Singapore’s cultural groups, and the World of Plants, six sub-gardens on rainforest biodiversity. The 2012 press text grouped them under the headings “Plants and People” and “Plants and Planet”.

Living collections, outdoor maps and a day out with a message.

Zoos, aquariums and botanic gardens build their identities around living collections, and the marks they choose often show it: a single animal, a leaf, a flower or a fish drawn as a simple outline that can be cut into a gate, printed on a ticket and stitched onto a staff shirt. The drawing style matters as much as the subject. A fine scientific illustration suggests research and record-keeping, while a bold, flat silhouette reads from across a car park and scales down to a phone screen. Many institutions keep both, using a plain mark for the brand and a deeper library of illustrations for exhibits, guides and the shop.

The other half of the identity is the site itself. Visitors spend hours outdoors on paths that branch, loop and change with the seasons, so wayfinding carries much of the brand’s daily work: colour-coded zones, pictograms, distance markers and maps that double as souvenirs. Signage has to survive sun, rain, frost and curious hands, which pushes designers towards durable materials, high-contrast type and panels that can be replaced one at a time. Glasshouses, aviaries and enclosures often become the emblem, since a recognisable building can stand for the whole place on a poster or a postcard. Throughout, the brand balances two voices: the invitation to a family day out and the message about conservation, research and care for species and habitats, and the design has to let both speak without one drowning the other.

An attraction whose structures carry the identity.

The structures are central to how the gardens present themselves. Grant Associates says on its project page that the 18 Supertrees and two cooled conservatories act as landmarks that have helped shape Singapore’s identity as a “City in a Garden”, which is the designers’ own claim. Wikipedia lists the places the grove has turned up on screen: the Supertrees appear in an episode of the BBC series Planet Earth II and in the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians.

The graphic work sat inside the design team from the start. Dezeen’s 2012 listing credits Thomas Matthews as communication designers and Land Design Studio as museum and visitor centre designers on Bay South. The main way in is designed as an arrival point: Wikipedia says the Bayfront Plaza, the entry precinct from Bayfront MRT station, includes Floral Fantasy, an indoor attraction with four floral landscapes and a 4D ride that follows a dragonfly’s flight path through the gardens. In 2022 the gardens marked ten years with a commemorative book, 10 Years of Growing Wonders, which Grant Associates reported was published by Gardens by the Bay as a free download.

The site is still growing. Wikipedia says a new attraction, Wetlands by the Bay, was announced in Parliament on 4 March 2026 for Bay South, to open in stages from the end of 2028, expanding the existing Kingfisher Wetlands and adding a museum by the art collective teamLab.

For a design guide, Gardens by the Bay shows how a master plan drawn from a single flower can become a whole identity, with the structures, the night show and the planting carrying the brand before any logo does. Compare the zoo and wildlife parks of Mandai in the same city, and the botanic garden and glasshouses of Kew Gardens in London. For this guide we use orchid magenta, canopy green and glasshouse mist with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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