Marina Bay Sands is Singapore’s Schelling point


Uncategorized / Sunday, October 4th, 2020

What’s Singapore’s single most identifiable landmark?

It’s changed over the years, and that’s the subject of another blogpost entirely. At some point it was the Merlion (featured in Japanese ads), at some point it was Changi Airport’s control tower. Before that, it might’ve been buildings like The Esplanade, or Old Parliament House.

The building’s logo is simple enough that a child could draw it.

But today, I believe that it’s Marina Bay Sands. And the primary reason for it, apart from its distinctiveness, is the infinity pool.

When it was under construction (and it cost $8,000,000,000 to build), it was derided for looking like “funeral tablets” or something of the sort.

But its infinity pool, overlooking the Singapore skyline, makes it one of the top aspirational Instagram photoshoot locations in the world:

It’s such a popular Instagram location, in fact, that Instagram themselves wrote a blogpost about it:

It almost seems like if you go there, you’re fairly likely to run into a celebrity.

There’s also a pretty cool light show:

This is part of a series of posts on Singaporean architecture.