Mok Wei Wei has shaped a unique identity for his Singapore boutique practice W Architects. During a career spanning over three decades, the award-winning designer and one of Asia’s leading architects has built domestic and commercial projects that offer a unique hybrid of contemporary design needs and urban sensibilities, infused with Chinese traditions and grounded within a local context. Be it designing private homes, apartment complexes, museums or community centres, Mok’s buildings are spatially daring, they are ecologically aware and, best of all, are full of fascinating creative solutions for constructing in a tropical ever-evolving dense Asian metropolis.
Mok Wei Wei: Works by W Architects charts this exceptional career. Published by Thames & Hudson, this visually-engaging and insightful book documents Mok’s designs from the 1980s to the present day to include W Architects’ most significant work – the austere rock that is Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, and the redesign for the National Museum of Singapore. Mok was raised as a Chinese cosmopolitan and schooled in architecture at the height of Postmodernism, and while Singapore forms the backdrop to most of the works featured here, his influence extends far beyond the city-state to the entire region. Written especially for the book, Mok calls for architecture to remain radical and to keep responding to the needs of our ever-evolving societies – words that feel urgent in an increasingly urbanised world.
Mok Wei Wei: Works by W Architects is published by Thames & Hudson.
Images: ‘The Oliv’ is an organic, textured, off-form planters juxtaposed with the sleek aluminium screens; ‘The Party House’ is a muted concrete structure cloaked by a stainless-steel curtain © Edwards Hendricks; at ‘ERC’ gentle ramps surround the central courtyard where mature conserved trees reside; ‘The National Museum of Singapore’ has a light-filled annex with views of Fort Canning Hill © Albert Lim K.S.; ‘Lee Kong Chiang Natural History Museum’ is a landmark within the National University of Singapore campus © Fabian Ong