New Bahru Hall transformed into design-led pickleball and cultural venue in Singapore

New Bahru Hall in Singapore has been adaptively reused as a multi-use pickleball court that doubles as a venue for live performances and cultural programming. The hospitality client The Lo & Behold Group commissioned Open Studio to retrofit the 1960s school hall as part of a broader redevelopment that converts a breeze-block-clad modernist school into a shopping and dining hub with serviced apartments.

Open Studio founders Lam Jun Nan and Jax Tan set out to preserve the hall's original fabric while introducing targeted contemporary interventions to meet sport and event requirements. “The hall retained a quiet material richness, particularly in its deep-stained teak panelling and ecru mosaic flooring,” Open Studio said, language that captures the project’s conservation-first ethos. Photographic detail and in-situ finishes underscore that approach: deep-stained teak panels sit beside glass doors, concrete seats remain visible, and staple marks in timber and floor repairs were left intentionally to underline the building’s history.

The retrofit opens up the interior for play and performance. Open Studio removed timber cladding around the hall’s columns to reveal original concrete structure, and took partitions and grilles off the clerestory windows to increase daylight and visual continuity. While the architects mostly refrained from heavy-handed change, they introduced a new waffle ceiling to accommodate contemporary technical needs and to reference the building’s modernist language. “While the architects mostly refrained from adding new interventions to the hall, they did add a new waffle ceiling that was designed to accommodate today's technical requirements while referencing the original modernist architecture,” the team noted. Galvanised-steel details are used deliberately as a cool counterpoint to the warm teak and ecru mosaic floor.

For pickleball players and event programmers, the hall’s hybrid identity matters. The exposed concrete columns and concrete seating help preserve sightlines and provide informal spectator terraces, while the waffle ceiling creates a vessel for lighting and sound equipment so the space can pivot between net play and staged shows. The Lo & Behold Group’s hospitality angle points to a commercial model that blends active recreation with lifestyle and F&B offerings at the larger site, a trend that could influence how urban developers program underused civic buildings.

Open Studio’s intervention sits within a sitewide makeover that other firms, including FARM and Nice Projects, have been associated with, though Open Studio led work on the hall itself. The result is a piece of adaptive reuse that keeps physical memory in view while serving contemporary demands of sport, culture, and hospitality.

For paddlers and city audiences, New Bahru Hall represents a new kind of venue: a preserved modernist interior that literally serves up pickleball alongside performance. Next steps to watch include the hall’s court configuration, programming schedule, and how operators balance bookings between sport and cultural events as the space moves into active use.