An artist's illustration of Rochester Commons, which will feature a green trail, interspersed with a sky garden, viewing decks, event spaces and meeting pods.PHOTO: CAPITALAND

A cluster of 12 heritage bungalows in Rochester Park in Buona Vista will house a mix of office, retail and food outlets as part of a new integrated development to be built by the end of next year.

These black-and-white bungalows, some of which used to be leased out to food and beverage operators, will soon be part of Singapore's first campus-style integrated development spread across 2.4ha of land in one-north, said CapitaLand in a press statement yesterday.

Rochester Commons, the 400,000 sq ft project developed and managed by the company, will have a 17-storey Grade A office tower.

Bungalows that will be part of the future Rochester Commons undergoing refurbishment, on Sept 9, 2020.ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG

Of the 12 bungalows, seven are for offices and the remaining five for food and beverage or retail use.

The development cost for Rochester Commons is around $550 million. It will also have a hotel that will be operated by CapitaLand's lodging unit, The Ascott Limited, under the Citadines Connect brand.

One of the key features of the development will be Catapult, South-east Asia's first shared executive learning centre that will use technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality to deliver training programmes.

The Rochester Commons construction site in one-north. A cluster of 12 heritage bungalows, some of which used to be leased out to food and beverage operators, will be part of the development and will house a mix of office, retail and food outlets.ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG

The centre, which focuses on areas such as leadership and innovation, is aimed at grooming executives for leadership agility and equipping them with future-ready skills.

Some of its learning approaches have already been trialled at Catapult's showroom at the Bridge+ co-working space in the Ascent building at Singapore Science Park 1. The showroom's centrepiece is a 180-degree immersive screen that allows shared VR viewing experience during workshops and is equipped with virtual conferencing capabilities.

CapitaLand Singapore's chief executive Tan Yew Chin said: "As companies and individuals adapt to the post Covid-19 environment, executive education and reskilling will be increasingly important."

"Catapult is designed to facilitate cross-learning and networking in a state-of-the-art campus. Catapult will also feature an online platform where learners and knowledge providers can learn, co-create and innovate for the future economy."

CapitaLand said the development of Rochester Commons is in line with the Government's vision of a world-class learning ecosystem in the research and knowledge hub of one-north.

Designed by global architecture firm Gensler, Rochester Commons will feature a single digital identity access that allows tenants to move through the entire development via facial recognition, QR code scanning or access cards.

Rochester Commons, which is set to become a first-of-its-kind integrated campus-style development, will include a 17-storey office tower with over 200,000 sq ft of core and flex working spaces. PHOTOS: CAPITALAND

Property managers can also tap a cloud-based intelligent building platform to draw on energy and space usage data to optimise building functions for users' comfort.

Likewise, the 135-unit Citadines Connect Rochester Singapore hotel will offer guests a seamless tech-enabled experience via mobile keys, self check-in kiosks and service robots that perform concierge tasks.

CapitaLand currently manages Galaxis, an office building with a retail podium, in one-north, and Singapore Science Park 1 and 2. The Ascott Limited manages Citadines Fusionopolis Singapore and the upcoming lyf one-north Singapore.