Beverly Mai is commonly known as Singapore’s first condominium. Completed in 1974, Built at the cost of S$4 million, the 28-storey tower at Tomlinson Road had a site area of 7,230 sq m and was designed by Timothy Seow & Partners (now known as ids studio). It is one of the earliest high-rise luxury apartments in Singapore and was developed along Seow’s pioneering concept of “bungalows in the-air.
The condominium is the first private residential project to incorporate maisonettes in apartment blocks and apartment units without party walls. It is also among the first to introduce the practice of shared facilities such as the swimming pool and other recreational amenities – features commonly found in condominiums today.
The urban landscape of Singapore in the 1960s was dominated by slab block public housing for the masses and landed dwellings for the affluent. Seow saw a demand for upmarket apartments, which would provide the space and privacy of a bungalow in land scarce Singapore without the prohibitive prices of landed property. He tested his bungalows in the-air concept on Maxima Apartments (now known as The Belmont), the precursor of Beverly Mai.
The tower block, developed on his parents’ property, had only one unit on each floor that was served by two lifts and a common swimming pool. Henry Kwee, the founder of Pontiac Land, was impressed with Seow’s concept and appointed him as the architect of Beverly Mai.
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