The Arcadia
#12-79 WCEGA Tower
21 Bukit Batok Crescent
For enquiries call Paramount
Assets Corporation at 6748 0048

By Audrey Phoon

TO paraphrase the old Belinda Carlisle song: 'Heaven is a workplace on earth'. . . or at least it could be to a dozen small businesses from mid-March. That's when a new serviced-offices project called The Arcadia will be launched, which will offer boutique workspaces in a more 'friendly', lifestyle-skewed context.

The 12-unit project, which is located in the brand new WCEGA Tower near Bukit Batok Central, is owned by workspace management company Paramount Assets Corporation.

It's the company's fifth serviced-office project in Singapore and will also be its most unconventional, says the company's owner Zachary Ng. He explains: 'We wanted something very different from the normal serviced offices, which are usually very simple, very clean coloured. People spend a lot of time working, and if we just keep looking at a plain environment, it can get boring.'

So it is that The Arcadia - designed by Singapore-based Ira Sophia - is a riot of colour, shapes and textures, from its black-and-gold reception that features a seating area within a gold cube that's set into one wall, to the padded red and purple corridors along which runs a gleaming mosaic panel.

The shared meeting room is white and silver, with plush baseball-mitt-like cocoons for seats and a Louis Poulsen PH Artichoke lamp, and the offices are covered in woven-leather wallpaper.

Design concept

Even the toilet is offbeat: A disco ball hangs above a mirror framed in LED lights as soft jazz plays in the background. 'It kind of gives you the feeling that you're at a nightspot, not at work,' quips Mr Ng.

Of the functionality of the design concept, he adds: 'When our clients bring their tenants in, it becomes an ice-breaker; also the cheerful feel energises them and motivates them to work.'

In terms of services provided to tenants, The Arcadia will offer the usual serviced-office amenities, and then some. When guests visit, for example, a well-spoken receptionist will usher them into the meeting room and offer them a prettily printed menu of beverages to choose from. Sleek, sturdy workplace furnishings are provided - tenants can add on workstations at no extra cost - and unlimited usage of utilities such as air-conditioning is included in the monthly charge, which starts from $900 for a two-person, 120-square-foot space (the biggest space can accommodate five persons, and for all leases there's a minimum rental period of six months).

According to Mr Ng, Paramount is the only company offering such boutique offices outside of the city area (it also has another design-centric but less elaborate project called The Bronx in the same building), and this is a niche he wants to continue to pursue.

'The out-of-town areas used to house more traditional businesses and there was no market for unconventional offices here previously, but as the younger generation comes into the picture, they are open to taking up these kinds of spaces,' he says.

'Of course, for us, it's more expensive to set up a boutique office as compared to a conventional one - all this design doesn't come cheap (The Arcadia cost $250,000 to complete). But we think that there is a group in between the people who are willing to pay for city offices, and those who just want a cheap, conventional office space. They are willing to spend a little more to get more, and they are the ones we are targeting.'

Tenants aren't the only ones who stand to gain - as a provider, Paramount draws satisfaction too from doing non-traditional projects. Says Mr Ng: 'If you keep doing standard things, after a while you're just repeating. We don't want that. We want some life inside every project.'

Looking ahead, he adds, the company has 'allocated a big budget to expand in this line, with different themes'.

'We hope to, in a way, mass produce these kinds of offices so that everyone can have a chance to experience them.'

This article was first published in The Business Times.

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