Jewel Changi Airport: a destination in its own right

Jewel Changi Airport, Singapore, is a pioneering project in airport design. The distinctive Jewel building creates a new civic centre, combining landside airport operations with expansive indoor gardens and waterfall leisure facilities, retail, restaurants and a hotel, as well as other spaces for community activities, all contained within the world’s largest gridshell-enclosed building. This article describes the design and construction of the building, focusing on the steel-and-glass gridshell roof structure and its toroidal centre accommodating a waterfall. The complex geometry of the gridshell required advanced modelling and analysis, as well as modern 3D printing technologies for the fabrication of the components, all of which are unique. Building information modelling was used to create digital plans of the construction process, tracking each component individually to ensure correct placement. The project received a Platinum rating from Singapore’s Green Mark certification scheme for environmentally sustainable buildings.