Rainforest Wild Adventure among winners of inclusive design award

SINGAPORE — For the first time since she started using a wheelchair 12 years ago, 79-year-old Aisah Ibrahim was able to experience an amusement park ride - the Rainforest Wild Adventure East’s Canopy Glider.

The accessible ride, which skims over animal habitats and through trees, has design features that make boarding a breeze even for those using wheelchairs.

“At first I felt so scared due to the height of the ride… but I loved the experience,” said Aisah during a visit to the park on Sept 15.

Rainforest Wild Adventure East is Singapore’s fifth wildlife park at the Mandai Wildlife Reserve. It was one of four projects to win the Building and Construction Authority’s (BCA) Universal Design Excellence Award (UDEA) this year.

Two out of 18 seats on its Canopy Glider ride have removable side guards and armrests. Staff are also equipped with a portable ramp to help wheelchair users get on and off.

At the park, free wheelchairs are available for elderly guests or those with disabilities, and signs on the handrails feature Braille translations for visually impaired guests to navigate the park independently.  

To make the park more accessible, its eight-metre uphill route uses an over 15-metre gradual elevated ramp, said Toh Sze Chong, project director for DP Architects, who helped in the park’s building process.

The park also has an accessible changing room with adult changing tables, to help caregivers safely assist with personal care needs. There are plans to build more such changing rooms in the other four parks.

Said vice president of park operations Maggie Ang: “Once the park is accessible, once the park is inclusive and comfortable, then everybody will be able to discover the fascinating world of wildlife.”

Other inclusive design award winners 

A four-storey extension to the Enabling Village, including a new 750-metre sheltered walkway linking Redhill MRT through the village to the Bukit Merah belt, also won the UDEA award.

A 350-metre section of this walkway is colour-contrasted and textured, with eight way-finding totems that show what is inside each building through diagrams and in Braille.

Chong Kwek Bin, the co-creator of Enable Lane and manager of innovation at SG Enable, said the lane is useful for those with visual impairment, like himself, and is also wheelchair accessible as it does not use indicators that protrude from the ground.

“Accessibility is always a work in progress… I do hope that other buildings, other physical premises, the owners and developers will find the pilots which are being run at (the) village useful and it opens up their minds to the possibility of trying out something that can benefit everyone,” he added.

The other two UDEA recipients were Great World Mall, which was enhanced for accessibility in 2023, and Harmony Village @ Bukit Batok, Singapore’s first community care apartment.  

User-friendly facility information available on Maps

On Sept 15, BCA also announced that parents searching for a diaper-changing station, seniors looking for barrier-free routes, and wheelchair users checking for accessible toilets can now find these amenities via Google Maps or at maps.gov.sg/friendlybuildings.

Over 600 public and commercial buildings across Singapore are included in this database, created in collaboration with Google Maps, Open Government Products and BCA. Accessible washrooms, hearing enhancement systems and lactation spaces are among the seven accessible amenities listed.

The information will be updated as new buildings are completed and assessed, while building owners can also directly update their building information on Google Maps.

Director of building plan and universal design at BCA, Tan Jwu Yih, said BCA is also working with building owners to expand coverage to older buildings.