The Pinnacle@Duxton Skybridge

Rooftop bars charge you a cocktail for the view. Here the ticket is an EZ-Link card and a lift through a housing estate.

The Pinnacle@Duxton skybridge is one of the best-value views in the CBD, and the most Singaporean way to get one: register your EZ-Link card at an HDB managing agent’s office, ride a lift through a working housing estate and step out 50 storeys above Tanjong Pagar. Go in the late afternoon and walk to the west-facing end for sunset. The compromises are a small fee, a cap on numbers and a short window to use your registration, so treat it as a planned stop rather than a whim.

Why it’s worth it

Partly the view, partly the fact that it exists at all. The estate stands on the site of the first two ten-storey HDB blocks in the Tanjong Pagar area. Redevelopment followed an international design competition in 2001 that drew 227 entries; the winning scheme by ARC Studio Architecture + Urbanism with RSP Architects was completed in 2009 and won a Best Tall Building award for Asia and Australasia in 2010. Its seven towers are linked at the 26th and 50th floors by two sky gardens, each about 500 metres long. The 26th floor is for residents; the 50th is the one you can visit.

Up top it is part park, part playground: zones named Hillock, Lounge, Cottage and Beach, a padded blue patch facing deckchairs, and Rocky, a playground of boulder-shaped blocks billed as Singapore’s highest. The lookout at the Block 1G end faces south; the Block 1A end faces west and is where to be as the sun drops. Because visitor numbers are capped, you are sharing the deck with a limited crowd rather than a tour group.

How to do it well

Go to the managing agent’s office on the ground floor of Block 1G, register a CEPAS card such as an EZ-Link card, pay the entry fee and enter within an hour. The card is your ticket, not your payment, and you tap it at the turnstile on level 50. Fees and visitor caps have changed over the years, and they exist to keep the crowds from disturbing residents, so check the official Pinnacle@Duxton site before you go and be considerate in the lifts and corridors; people live here.

Arrive in the late afternoon, walk the length of the deck as the light changes and finish at the 1A end. Bring water, and don’t count on finding toilets up top; it is a long way down to correct that mistake. It suits architecture fans, families with energetic children and anyone curious about how Singapore lives. The deck reopened to the public in July 2022 after its pandemic closure. These are no ordinary flats, either: in 2020 a five-room unit here resold for a record $1.23 million. The neighbours paid rather more for the view than you will.

Good to know Register at the managing agent’s office on the ground floor of Block 1G with a CEPAS or EZ-Link card, then enter within an hour. Hours are in the facts box; fees and visitor caps can change, so check the official Pinnacle@Duxton site before you go. Don’t count on toilets on level 50.

The Pinnacle@Duxton Skybridge | Block 1G, The Pinnacle@Duxton, Duxton Plain, Singapore