The Warehouse Hotel
Singapore’s history as a trading port is a tale that many of us know too well. What’s truly fascinating is the underbelly of those periods—the triads, underground dens, illicit moonshine distillery and all of the risqué from the disco era. The Warehouse Hotel is a bridge between this colourful heritage and the contemporary.
320 Havelock Road,
Robertson Quay, Singapore
Year: 2016
Strategy, Branding, Space
Restoring the iconic warehouse into a riverside hotel where hospitality and conservation come together.
To embrace the building’s, and the city’s, vibrant history and culture through modern design and a lot of character.
The Warehouse Hotel was once a cornerstone along the Straits of Malacca trade route—at a time when secret societies, underground activities and illicit distilleries ran the streets. Today, through carefully preserved architecture, thoughtful hospitality and curated partnerships with the best craftsmen, makers or artisans around the region, we’re able to bring forth the best of Singapore.
With each beam and thread comes a chapter of our story and a celebration of Singapore’s colourful history.
Old-world glamour with modern comforts. Experience Singapore through the looking glass of The Warehouse Hotel.
For this project, Asylum created a distinctive logotype with a custom letter ‘H’——designed to mirror the roof of the warehouse. In fact, the overall identity draws inspiration from various elements of the building’s original architecture, like The Warehouse Hotel’s three peaks.
The secondary logo (較油豐和) is an inversion of the original signage on the existing architecture. Inspired by its arc form as well as our cultural Chinese couplets, Asylum designed a suite of assets referencing old clan signboards for various applications.
The voice that tells our story is confident and unapologetic, with a touch of mystery and seduction to accentuate the charm and allure of The Warehouse Hotel. An effortlessly cool, master of the house.
A collaboration with homegrown architecture studio, Zarch Collaboratives, and cross-disciplinary design firm, Asylum, the space sets out to revisit some of Singapore's lost history by integrating industrial-like textures with modern luxe finishes. A portal to the region’s culture and eclecticism, and a nod to our unique heritage.
Tipping a hat to our coloured past, the Lobby Bar showcases a curation of décor and furnishings that take our guests on a journey through time and space; from the colourful spice trade to illicit affairs and the giddy heyday of disco——masterfully captured in a series of crafted and themed cocktails.
Lobby Bar
“A city’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.”
There remains much to be said and discovered about our city; from the artists we work with to the wayward stories we tell, we wear our hearts on our sleeves through every detail that our guests encounter during their stay in Singapore. And however times may change, our little warehouse will always be a cornerstone in this beautifully layered, wonderfully diverse city.
