World-renowned Israeli architect Moshe Safdie has been busy. His popular Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore, which opened in 2010, was billed as the most expensive stand-alone casino property in the world at the time, valued at $8 billion. Today, it is hard to miss on the skyline.

Now, he’s busy wrapping up his next big project, the new Jewel lifestyle destination at Changi Airport, which is set to debut in early 2019. Unusual and extensive in scope, Jewel is technically not a terminal. The idea behind the development was to position Changi Airport as a destination in and of itself, not just a place only those in transit.

As far as airports go, Changi needs no introduction: It has been named the best airport in the world for six consecutive years by the Skytrax’s World Airport Awards. With unusual attractions, including butterfly and sunflower gardens, a free movie theater, kid-friendly playgrounds, and free tours of Singapore for passengers with layovers, it has raised the bar for what other world airports should aspire towards. Currently, the four terminals accommodate over 82 million passengers annually. With Jewel around the bend, that bar has been raised even higher.

Workers construct the Jewel's skylight. Photo: Charu Kokate / Safdie Architects

Owned by the Jewel Changi Airport Trust—which is a joint venture company formed by the Changi Airport Group (CAG) in partnership with CapitaLand Limited—the new lifestyle destination aims to be attractive to all demographics. “Places like Universal Studios or Disney can get dated very fast and people can get tired of them,” says Safdie. “We wanted to come up with something truly timeless, and the concept of a paradise garden came about."

The architect and his firm first had to submit ideas in a bidding process to CapitaLand, which would pick the winner. “As I started to sketch the design ideas, we liked the idea of a fully transparent roof over the building,” says Safdie. The sketch of a paradise garden with the largest indoor waterfall in the world helped the architectural firm win the bid.