Gem Residences

About Gem Residences

Gem Living
Here is where time defines luxury
What does living well mean? No longer are tangibles enough; it is increasingly about the experiences that surround them. It’s about being able to watch the sunset on a rooftop with a ice-cold beer in your hands. It’s about being able to watch your children learn to swim in trusted hands. It’s about finding neighbours who love animals and urban farming as much as you do. It’s about time. Time to relish the sleek ease of state-of-the-art kitchen fittings while cooking up a storm for loved ones. Time to try an aqua zumba class and indulge in a long soak in the jacuzzi. Time to walk to your favourite cafe or hawker food without looking at your watch. It is a new mantra of luxury: life is not just to be lived, it is to be enjoyed.

We get that. We get that having a full-range of facilities is not enough. We want to introduce that fine brilliance into every facet of your life. We want to make home a place where you can relax and have the time to enjoy what has been thoughtfully designed for you. We want to make it a place that truly understands your needs. Here at Gem Residences, living comes with an extra hand — our concierge. Whether it’s an everyday need or a special affair, we’re here to make things better so that you can enjoy the precious things in life. It’s about time to live where you can savour the pleasure of feeling at home.

The New Contemporary
Gem Residences seeks to be a modern interpretation of its heritage roots.
As Singapore’s first housing estate, Toa Payoh holds more than 60 years of pioneering spirit and is now a microcosm of landmarks, public spaces and various demographic groups. Gem Residences was designed with a sensitivity to these layers that hold the rich history and culture of the town. “It was this multi-faceted nature of the Toa Payoh estate that became one of the main drivers in the design of this development,” says Yuen Yi-May, who was singled out by Singapore Business Review as one of Singapore’s 15 great architects and engineers aged 40 and younger last year. This means carrying out living spaces for a contemporary lifestyle while retaining basic creature comforts which led to a triadic focus on facilities, activities and personalised concierge services. Multiple facilities from outdoor teppanyaki and grill pavilions to a spacious clubhouse with cooking facilities, and a 50m swimming pool to unparalleled views from rooftop spaces, cater for the multiple facets of living. Communal spaces such as urban farming plots and a pet area also foster organic interaction as a nod towards the original kampong spirit of the town.

To be a home of the future also calls for the consideration of sustainability. The architecture is designed to respond to nature, such that sun rays falls as light but not heat, and ventilation comes with maximised views. Lush greenery lines the journey from entrance to doorstep for a welcoming boulevard that leads you home. More than just another building that just blends into the landscape, Gem Residences carries forth the constant renewal of the town as a contemporary and the next cut in its urban tapestry.

Facilities & Services Designed Just For You
Here is where you will find a new lifestyle. It isn’t just the green landscaped boulevard or the state-of- the-art kitchen and bathroom fittings in your house. It’s the way you can have ready-to-cook ingredients at your doorstep within the hour or a full buffet of gourmet food, if that’s what you need.

Smart Connections
Singapore is small. It is also a densely populated city, making proximity to amenities all the more essential. Time is a commodity too valuable to be wasted on travelling an hour just for groceries. Also key is location to prime areas, both for work and play — not only does a short commute preserve sanity, there’s just so many things more worth the time stuck in transit. Toa Payoh ticks all the right boxes: besides being a 14-minute drive away from CBD, a mere four train stops from the Orchard shopping belt and located near various recreational parks and educational institutes, the town is also a well-established public transport node that connects residents to other parts of Singapore with ease.

Still, there’s little reason to get out of town with its myriad of amenities and facilities. Just minutes away from the interchange is a library, a 3900-seat stadium, swimming complex, gymnasium, and a vibrant mix of both modern and traditional stores. The size of the town is also thankfully not relative to the considerable number of infamous hawker and cafe joints dotted along the lorongs, making it possible to walk to good food. After all, while the “heartware” is what differentiates a town, it has to be partnered with the right “hardware” — transport, facilities, and well-planned infrastructure just to name a few. One can hardly ignore the essential role of smart technology and the recognition that while the forecast for future mobility is green, the outlook isn’t — the importance of sustainable transportation is certainly not to be ignored, especially for cities.

Travelling green may not seem as viable right now with the great need for convenience and speed, but with initiatives such as the building of the 36-km Central Urban Loop, which brings Singapore’s Park Connector Network (PCN) to a total distance of 300km, it may soon be. Meanwhile, consider this: living with electric car charging pods, car-sharing initiatives and concierge services can be quick steps forward in saving the future without a lifestyle overhaul.

The Ingredients Of Life
Food: subsistence for the body, balm for the soul, and the soil on which relationships take root. Coming together for a meal has been a practice since ancient times to strengthen relationships, forge new connections, share stories, and celebrate both the everyday as well as special occasions. Our local obsession with food isn’t entirely unfounded after all. It has become such a huge part of Singaporean culture that if the nation was to be boiled down to three words, it’ll probably be: efficiency, Singlish, and food.

It may well be always a matter of dispute where the best laksa or chicken rice is but this much is clear: residents of Toa Payoh have it good. Despite being in such close proximity to the city district, there’s no reason to even venture out with the food options here. Whether it’s a craving for fragrant kopi-o, sipped to the seasoned clockwork sounds of hawkers, or a smooth latte topped with an embarrassingly adorable foam cat, there are considerable choices for you at any time. And you can still keep to wearing shorts and slippers. How so many good eats can be found in a small town like Toa Payoh is anyone’s guess. A good number of Singapore’s top hawkers are well within walking distance — some only a few metres apart. This is where you can try two famed versions of hokkien mee before walking to beloved handcrafted ice-cream parlour Creamier for dessert. It’s also where you can choose to brunch hard on a Sunday morning with usual suspects like eggs benedict before going back to nostalgic land with ice kachang and red ruby.

Like all gems, these places draw people from all over the island and even overseas, whether for the magical carrot cake, panfried in patties by warm-hearted sisters, or the homebaked pastries from Niche Savoureuse. Here is certainly where one can find the magic of food weaved deeply into its history and community — a town where chefs and customers stay friends from generations past to those yet to come.

High-End Heartland
Cafes are no novelty in Singapore. Demand and supply have never been higher, with cafe-hopping a favourite weekend activity. The quest to trawl through the list of new cafes is fuelled by large numbers of entrants — with more than 200 in 2015 alone. A good percentage don’t stay, for gone are the days where a well-made brew is enough. Novelty on top of solid food offerings is required for any to stand out, along with the new benchmark of a cafe’s Instagrammable value — which means paying attention to gorgeous interiors, well-presented food and good lighting. Free Wi-Fi is of course another essential, for how else will these photographs make instant presence on social media?

This artisanal cafe wave that swept Singapore five years ago is flooding even into heartlands where the coffee sock used to hold reign, making strolling to a cafe from home now a possibility. Even if it’s not your hood, it gives great reason to explore another estate. Curious results emerge as older generations start taking to these modern entrants, sometimes even choosing espresso over kopi-o. It may very well be time to relook the definition of the word “hipster” here.

Facilities & Services For The Foodie In You
Here is where you will find a new lifestyle. You can now do things more quickly and conveniently. As well as gain access to things that simply weren’t possible before. Like having a private chef cook you a meal, food delivered to your doorstep and dining at the hottest tables with the girl you just met in London. It’s all at your fingertips.

The Art of Living Well
For many national sports players, Toa Payoh holds special meaning to them as the place for their trainings and competitions since decades ago. Not only did it host the 1973 Southeast Asian Peninsular (SEAP) Games (now known as SEA Games), it was also the home ground for the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics and the Lion City Cup tournament.

A large reason for the draw is its world-class facilities. With a 3900-seater stadium, five swimming pools, an all-purpose sports hall and a gymnasium, Toa Payoh Sports Centre certainly has much to flex about. Today, the numerous past glories and tribulations the complex has seen all continue to serve as inspiration to athletes who train there. For some of these athletes, it has even come full circle — they now coach on the same grounds, no longer students of the past but teachers of the future.

And like any good sportsman, the iconic sports centre humbly serves both athletes and residents without rest. The accessibility to these facilities comes especially significant in an age where many of us bulldoze our way through life with ambition, forgetting that burnout and exhaustion will only be end points without taking into account the need to slow down and live well. As mindful living grows to be a new counter-trend to the overly-stimulated and highly-distracted culture once so embraced, the importance of moving one’s body for both the physical and mental becomes only clearer.

For body and soul is not as separate as it seems and keeping the mind healthy is also fundamental. Remember to walk with nature, lie by the pool, catch the sunset at the rooftop and simply breathe.

Modern Kampong
Modernising public housing upwards to the current HDB blocks in the 1960s meant compromising in part on the kampong spirit — a spirit that lived within the inclusive layout of attap houses, with doors often remaining unlocked and effusive help always available from neighbours.

Thankfully, remnants of that warmth can still be found in the corridors of today, especially in a mature estate like Toa Payoh. Being home to a wide demographic that includes the firstgen elderly and the newer generations won over by well-structured amenities, the town still retains an affinity to the past that goes beyond physical changes. A languid walk in the afternoon shows playgrounds with running children and elderly friends playing dum or chess. The newest cafe chef walks over to the wet market just beside for his daily greens, freshly delivered and waiting.

In this modern age, there are community centres and other initiatives to foster interaction intra- and inter- towns. With the fast pace of life here, however, it isn’t so easy to attend many of these initiatives even if the heart is willing. Sometimes it’s difficult to even to keep in touch with your closest neighbours. Emerging trends such as offering classes within housing areas like condominiums make it convenient for both the individual and the family to meet others. Urban farming is also another activity in which budding relationships thrive, with nature’s healing effect slowly uncurling the stress of urban life. At the end of the day, this is what matters most: to be together with your loved ones and knowing that a supportive community is there for you — a place where you belong.

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