Living the Lyf: Coliving hotel Lyf opens at One-North

At left, Lyf’s seven-storey mural and its loft apartment, at right. Photos: Mural Lingo, Lyf

By Carolyn Teo

Apr 14, 2022 | 3:57pm Singapore time

A trendy hotel has opened featuring one of the tallest murals in Singapore, trippy anamorphic art and cozy communal spaces.

Coliving brand Lyf, pronounced ‘life,’ just launched its newest property this week in One-North on Nepal Park. Aimed at attracting workers from nearby tech start-ups, research and development firms and media enterprises, Lyf refer to them as “next-generation guests.”

The seven-storey property has 324 units with studio and loft apartments that start from S$130 and S$175 a night, respectively. Local lodging operator The Ascott Limited plans to have 150 Lyf properties with over 30,000 units by 2030. They currently own 17 properties, including one at Funan and another at Farrer Park, which opened in February.

The hotel is equipped with an outdoor pool, a communal kitchen and lounge, meeting rooms and an outdoor amphitheater open to the public for events and performances. It also has a game room, which they call an Innovation Lab, where guests can immerse themselves in virtual reality and augmented reality technologies created in collaboration with Temasek Polytechnic students.

But the element that seems to make this property really stand out is its biophilic art. Almost every space in the hotel features vibrant eye-catching murals plastered everywhere from the lift lobbies to corridors and in the rooms.

Most noticeably, there is a giant 25-meter, seven-story-high wall mural on the facade of the building done by Singapore-based Colombian graffiti artist Didier “Jaba” Mathieu, who took weeks to complete the towering work. It depicts a utopian future in which nature has consumed cities and humanity is living with high-tech hovercars.

Inside the building, you can spot a series of anamorphic and optical illusion murals done by local art studio Mural Lingo. Camera icons on the ground indicate the best angles through which to view them or snap pics.

According to the studio, the spiral-like geometric murals in the corridors are inspired by the Bauhaus movement that lets guests “see into the future and alternate reality.”

The murals in the rooms and rooftop also feature people in a distant tech-forward future intertwined with plenty of nature. Even the funky laundry room has an art installation made with used washing machine tumblers and murals dedicated to roosters that roam the neighborhood.

The hotel started accepting guests last November and has seen an occupancy rate of 85%. Most of the guests, a mix of local and foreign working adults and students, have booked long-term stays of at least a month.

There are seven Lyf properties in Singapore, China, Japan and Thailand. Five more properties are slated to open this year in Bangkok, Cebu, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne and Xi’an.