With the lessons learnt from the 2004 incident; collaspe of the Nicoll Highway due to soft marine clay, the engineers combat it by building giant concrete walls AKA diaphragm walls to allow easier constrcution of MBS without water coming in. I think even without the problem of marine clay, it is still very dangerous to build such huge project on a recently claimed land. Moreover, these diaphragm walls weren't created as a solid foundation to build MBS, but only to prevent sea water from entering. Moshe Safdie, one of the chief architect mentioned that this whole project was supposedly a 6 to 7 years project, but shortened to 3 years to complete. The number of years for completion is literally shortened by half and I can't help but link to the thinking that there might by some exploitation of workers involved and shabby work done with inferior materials. Though it may sound unlikely a place as strict as Singapore, but one may never know as it does indeed sound impossible for me to imagine completing such a huge project with only 3 years without constant overtime working of onsite workers. In addition, during the period of constructing MBS, there was a global crisis in September which made me feel even deeper of the possibility.
Forutnately, as of now there are no typhoons or heavy rainstorms sighted in Singapore or it would be very consequential to MBS. As mentioned, MBS is not only built on reclaimed land but it is also facing directly towards the bay front where wind power is the strongest. Strong wind can cause buildings to sway and may ineveitably damage the sky park if not constructed properly to withstand these wind. Engineers have came up with flexible construction of the sky park so that it wouldn't collaspe when wind blows. However, this is only if the wind power is within the calculations of what the engineers think the building can withstand. And these calculations are normally based on the average wind intensities faced in Singapore. If let's say Singapore that has never before been hit by a typhoon is hit by a strong one, then in my perspective I think that the building may, or definitely will collaspe. The sky park can only deform up to 200 millimetres (20cm).
If you think building the 3 hotel towers and sky park sounds dangerous and impractical alreasy, wait till you hear the ArtScience Musuem. It seemed even more unsound to have it built in water! But well, even if it's impossible, engineers and architects would have to find solutions to make the impossible possible. They built 3 pavilions in 6 metres under water in order to construct the ArtScience Musuem. Water is then pumped out of the pavilions into the sea. However, there is a danger of hydrostatic pressure where the increase in sea level would cause the water pressure outside the walls to increase thus damaging the pavilion. And surely, the pavilion walls started to show signs of leakages where the architects hired 8 professional divers to search for the leakage spots and plaster them up. Though I don't know anyway of solving this problem either, but I think that hiring divers to plaster up the leakages isn't exactly a good solution too. The water is too dirty for the divers to even see where they are swimming underwater, hence they only rely on the feel of the suction of water towards the walls and this "feel-only-and-plaster-up" solution doesn't sound safe to any of us. The divers may miss one or two spots that might be too subtle to feel it and in the future, with the completed ArtScience Musuem weighing on it, the cracks may widen and eventually the pavilion may be damaged, sinking the whole musuem.
I think that the MBS is indeed one of the wonders in Singapore's infrastructure, but these factors of where and how it was built make me dare not think of how it would become in the next decades to come.
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