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Did Singapore copy its landmark airport rainforest and mall complex from Qatar’s designs?
- The US$1.25 billion lifestyle hub, which opened in April, has already attracted more than 50 million visitors in its first six months alone
- But Hamad International Airport CEO Akbar al-Baker seemed to suggest it’s just a rip-off of his airport’s six-year-old expansion plans
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When Singapore’s Changi Airport opened its landmark new entertainment and retail complex, Jewel, in April it was hailed by international media as a marvel of modern architecture.
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Described as “part luxury mall and part indoor rainforest”, the US$1.25 billion lifestyle hub has already attracted more than 50 million visitors in its first six months alone.
But was the vast new “instantly recognisable icon”, as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has called it, actually ripped off from Qatar?
That’s what Hamad International Airport and Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker seemed to suggest when he unveiled his airport’s ambitious expansion plans in Doha last month.
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“Somebody copied our design, which was already on the table six years ago,” he was quoted as saying by Australian travel news and reviews website Executive Traveller.
“We had individuals from that country, I will not name it, who took that and did it [themselves].”
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