Mun Summ Wong
Co-Founder, WOHA, Singapore
Last updated: July 19, 2024 Singapore
He is also a member of the Nominating Committee of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize and other design advisory panels in Singapore.
Mun Summ Wong founded WOHA with Richard Hassell in 1994. The firm focuses on the integration of environmental and social principles at every stage of the design process. WOHA’s architecture is guided by the local context and culture, and above all, by the local climatic conditions, which determine every energy-saving strategy. WOHA’s structures are designed to harmonize with and incorporate natural ecosystems, and to proactively encourage self-sufficient cities, which will have no need for the use of artificial energy.
WOHA won a Holcim Awards Bronze 2017 Asia Pacific for their project “Floating University in Bangladesh” located on polluted swampland in Dhaka. Working with the client, an NGO-run university by BRAC (Building Resources Across Communities), with the focus on a building that is a catalyst for social and environmental change. The project was praised by the independent jury for “setting a new benchmark for sustainability in Asia – and how a single building is conceived as a larger rejuvenation project for the city.”
Global finalist entry 2018 – Floating University in Bangladesh
Floating University in Bangladesh – Holcim Foundation Awards 2017 Bronze for Asia Pacific - Remediating a wetland and floating a new university above it, this project adds both open and built space to the city of Dhaka.
WOHA have received international awards for their work, including the Best Mixed-Use Building (2019), Best Tall Building Worldwide (2018), Urban Habitat Award (2015 & 2019) from the CTBUH, RAIA Jørn Utzon Award (2011), RIBA Lubetkin Prize (2011), Singapore President’s Design Award – Designer of the Year (2008), Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2007), and they have won seven separate categories in the World Architecture Festival, including the 2018 World Building of the Year for Kampung Admiralty. Their most awarded projects have been Oasia Hotel Downtown, the School of the Arts, and the Parkroyal on Pickering, which is one of the most photographed and popular hotels in Singapore.
WOHA launched Garden City Mega City: Rethinking Cities for the Age of Global Warming (Pesaro, 2016) at the 2016 Venice Biennale, which shares strategies for the exploding megacities of the tropical belt. In the book, WOHA shows how integrated landscape, architecture and urbanism can improve quality of life within high-density environments.
Mun Summ Wong graduated with Honours from NUS (1989). He is currently running the integrated project studio with Nirmal Kishnani for the Master of Science, Integrated Sustainable Design program at NUS.