With this building, recipient of an SIA Award, RDC attempted to merge the commercial and the residential into one. Building further on the ideas of Moshe Safdie, Balestier Point ascends in steps from a single-storey street frontage to a maximum height of 18 storeys. This gradation provides an opportunity to build up the viewer’s expectation and also the visual link between the shopping block and the apartments above. The four-storey podium block contains two levels of shops and two car park levels. It is linked aesthetically to the main block by means of the square grid and cascading modules. The concept for the shopping complex stems from the recognition that the shaded “five-foot way” which in the past provided the sense of intimacy and scale typical of tropical shopping can be abstracted in the form of a framed hollow cube, used here as a module upon which the overall scale is based. For the apartments, the recession allows a reduction in traffic noise from the road below. The colours are chosen to denote inner and outer planes of the facade.