<p>A day into the semi-guided tour of the Changi Airport, memories from an earlier visit to Singapore flash in and stick. Over the six-odd hours spent in some of the airport’s bustling stretches, it hits you that the Changi experience, as the stock promotional line might call it, could well be the Singapore experience. This, at one level, is also a nicely cut show-reel on what makes the city-state what it is. How do you work with the sprawl and the hubbub of a four-terminal airport that handles 90 million passengers in a year to create a destination with diverse, immersive to-dos, an experience in itself?</p>.<p>At the Canopy Park, on the fifth level of the airport mall, Jewel, a walking net is strung tautly, 25 metres above the ground.</p>.<p>A few nervous steps later, there is a sense of all these scheduled parts of the itinerary coming together to form a whole — gardens, mazes and glass installations, the sounds of an interactive symphony, the flavours of the local fried rice, the thrill of balancing wobbly feet on a suspended web. The idea here is to get the passenger out of the transit areas to do the more fun, touristy things.</p>.<p>Standing on the watch tower in the middle of a hedge maze and taking in all the greenery around, you have to remind yourself that you are at an airport, that these features have been curated to elevate waiting time before take-off to something more exciting, more lived. You have not checked your phone for over an hour; you see what the airport operators meant when they said passengers could be tourists in transit. Changi, though, is also a place where people just turn up; people who are not flying, people who do not have ETDs on their minds.</p>.<p>The Shiseido Forest Valley in Jewel is a stunningly laid out garden space with more than 900 trees and palms, and about 60,000 shrubs.</p>.<p>Naturally lit and housing “the world’s tallest indoor waterfall”, the 24/7 garden can be accessed from four levels of the mall and is among the most visited attractions around the airport.</p>.<p>The waterfall — called the HSBC Rain Vortex — cascades down seven storeys and comes with a popular light and sound show that opens at 8 pm, every day.</p>.<p>Nature has always been a part of the airport’s aesthetic — there are themed gardens that feature cacti (T1) and sunflowers grown in the Changi nursery (T2 rooftop), and a display of flora and fauna from tropical rainforests (T1). At the Crystal Garden in the T3 transit area, beds of flowering plants surround dandelion glass sculptures that are put together with 1,735 Bohemian Glass components.</p>.<p>The Gourmet Garden in the T2 transit area is a smart spin on a functional dining space where the food outlets are lined under dangling foliage, as passengers watch planes taxiing on the apron.</p>.<p>In the T3 transit area, the Butterfly Garden sets up home amid flowering plants for over 1,000 tropical butterflies from about 40 species. The digital sky above the T2 indoor garden, Dreamscape, is built with meteorological data and mimics real-time weather.</p>.<p>Bringing Singapore and its garden-city tones within Changi has been a consideration for the airport’s operators. The brief, it appears, is also to give transit travellers a taste of Singapore, just enough to have them visit the country later.</p>.<p>Watching the Wonderfall — a 14 metre-tall digital waterfall that is set to a composition by pianist-composer Jean-Michel Blais — is the point at which the idea of an airport as a destination makes absolute sense.</p>.<p>The installation is in the middle of the departure hall in the revamped T2; you think of airport departure halls in a less inspired setting: busy, unremarkable spaces where passengers pause only for selfies.</p>.<p>The choice to repackage familiar experiences and utilities for the Instagram age appears integral to the airport’s evolving design. Changi’s iconic flight information board has been repurposed as an installation in T2 — Flap Pix — where you can create a self-portrait using the 1,080 split flaps on the board. At the new retail liquor outlet in T2, an LED ring is suspended around the facility, playing a video themed ‘Forest of Li Bai’ which is inspired by the Chinese poet’s work.</p>.<p>Changi offers an expansive local and international dining spread. Its shopping spaces are evidently popular and there are exclusive areas and promotional campaigns aimed at families and children.</p>.<p> Two months after the visit, the more striking memory flashes are, still, about the unfamiliar joys of finding calm in a crowd.</p>.<p>The mind-reel that keeps coming back involves skytrains moving between terminals, slow enough for the passengers inside to take pictures of the waterfall and the imposing landscapes around. Four of them have passed. There is time, you decide to leave after the next.</p>.<p><em>(The correspondent was in Singapore at the invitation of Changi Airport.)</em></p>
<p>A day into the semi-guided tour of the Changi Airport, memories from an earlier visit to Singapore flash in and stick. Over the six-odd hours spent in some of the airport’s bustling stretches, it hits you that the Changi experience, as the stock promotional line might call it, could well be the Singapore experience. This, at one level, is also a nicely cut show-reel on what makes the city-state what it is. How do you work with the sprawl and the hubbub of a four-terminal airport that handles 90 million passengers in a year to create a destination with diverse, immersive to-dos, an experience in itself?</p>.<p>At the Canopy Park, on the fifth level of the airport mall, Jewel, a walking net is strung tautly, 25 metres above the ground.</p>.<p>A few nervous steps later, there is a sense of all these scheduled parts of the itinerary coming together to form a whole — gardens, mazes and glass installations, the sounds of an interactive symphony, the flavours of the local fried rice, the thrill of balancing wobbly feet on a suspended web. The idea here is to get the passenger out of the transit areas to do the more fun, touristy things.</p>.<p>Standing on the watch tower in the middle of a hedge maze and taking in all the greenery around, you have to remind yourself that you are at an airport, that these features have been curated to elevate waiting time before take-off to something more exciting, more lived. You have not checked your phone for over an hour; you see what the airport operators meant when they said passengers could be tourists in transit. Changi, though, is also a place where people just turn up; people who are not flying, people who do not have ETDs on their minds.</p>.<p>The Shiseido Forest Valley in Jewel is a stunningly laid out garden space with more than 900 trees and palms, and about 60,000 shrubs.</p>.<p>Naturally lit and housing “the world’s tallest indoor waterfall”, the 24/7 garden can be accessed from four levels of the mall and is among the most visited attractions around the airport.</p>.<p>The waterfall — called the HSBC Rain Vortex — cascades down seven storeys and comes with a popular light and sound show that opens at 8 pm, every day.</p>.<p>Nature has always been a part of the airport’s aesthetic — there are themed gardens that feature cacti (T1) and sunflowers grown in the Changi nursery (T2 rooftop), and a display of flora and fauna from tropical rainforests (T1). At the Crystal Garden in the T3 transit area, beds of flowering plants surround dandelion glass sculptures that are put together with 1,735 Bohemian Glass components.</p>.<p>The Gourmet Garden in the T2 transit area is a smart spin on a functional dining space where the food outlets are lined under dangling foliage, as passengers watch planes taxiing on the apron.</p>.<p>In the T3 transit area, the Butterfly Garden sets up home amid flowering plants for over 1,000 tropical butterflies from about 40 species. The digital sky above the T2 indoor garden, Dreamscape, is built with meteorological data and mimics real-time weather.</p>.<p>Bringing Singapore and its garden-city tones within Changi has been a consideration for the airport’s operators. The brief, it appears, is also to give transit travellers a taste of Singapore, just enough to have them visit the country later.</p>.<p>Watching the Wonderfall — a 14 metre-tall digital waterfall that is set to a composition by pianist-composer Jean-Michel Blais — is the point at which the idea of an airport as a destination makes absolute sense.</p>.<p>The installation is in the middle of the departure hall in the revamped T2; you think of airport departure halls in a less inspired setting: busy, unremarkable spaces where passengers pause only for selfies.</p>.<p>The choice to repackage familiar experiences and utilities for the Instagram age appears integral to the airport’s evolving design. Changi’s iconic flight information board has been repurposed as an installation in T2 — Flap Pix — where you can create a self-portrait using the 1,080 split flaps on the board. At the new retail liquor outlet in T2, an LED ring is suspended around the facility, playing a video themed ‘Forest of Li Bai’ which is inspired by the Chinese poet’s work.</p>.<p>Changi offers an expansive local and international dining spread. Its shopping spaces are evidently popular and there are exclusive areas and promotional campaigns aimed at families and children.</p>.<p> Two months after the visit, the more striking memory flashes are, still, about the unfamiliar joys of finding calm in a crowd.</p>.<p>The mind-reel that keeps coming back involves skytrains moving between terminals, slow enough for the passengers inside to take pictures of the waterfall and the imposing landscapes around. Four of them have passed. There is time, you decide to leave after the next.</p>.<p><em>(The correspondent was in Singapore at the invitation of Changi Airport.)</em></p>