ION Orchard and The Orchard Residences
ION Orchard and The Orchard Residences are the two major components of the Orchard Turn Development Project, an iconic integrated retail and residential development, constructed immediately above the existing MRT Orchard Station. Located at the prime site of Singapore's commercial and shopping artery, ION Orchard provides a total of 66,000 square meters of retail space for over 300 retail, F&B and entertainment stores. The Orchard Residences is a 56-storey tower with a height of 218 meters accommodating 175 super-luxury residential units. Sharing a 20m deep 4-level basement with ION Orchard, it is the tallest and most architechturally-definitive landmark in the Orchard Road area.
Kiso-Jiban Consultants and Kiso-Jiban Singapore provided a full set of geotechnical services for the project including (a) geotechnical investigation, (b) Interpretation of ground conditions, (c) geotechnical risk assessment, (d) geotechnical analysis and design of foundations and earth retaining structures, (e) geotechnical instrumentation and monitoring and (f) geotechnical consulting and PE services in design and construction stages.
Bukit Timah Granite is the basic geological formation at the site. The top portions of the granite is heavily weathered and turned into residual soils. The residual soils at the site are partly covered by Fill and Alluvial soft soils with a maximum thickness of 7m and the Fill includes the materials backfilled at the time of the construction of Orchard Station. Diaphragm walls and foundation piles are founded on either heavily weathered Granite or Granite bedrocks.
As the construction was carried out with the MRT being in operation, it was a challenge to minimize the movements of the ground as well as the existing structures including the MRT truck. Careful design and construction planning before the construction and close collaboration with the Contractor during the construction, especially in feedback the monitoring results to the planning of the next-stage construction, were the keys to the success of the construction project
