The Clement Canopy's twin towers in Singapore were not poured — they were stacked. Built from 1,899 individually prefabricated concrete modules using Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction (PPVC), the 140-metre, 40-storey towers hold the record as the world's tallest modular concrete buildings.

The engineering challenge wasn't manufacturing the modules; it was achieving structural continuity across a building assembled from nearly two thousand separately-made boxes, each produced weeks or months apart and hundreds of kilometres from where it would finally sit.

1,899
Prefabricated modules
140 m
Tower height
40
Storeys per tower
~1 year
Module installation period
Stage 1
Structural precast
The concrete structural shell of every module was precast in a yard in Senai, Malaysia — the first of a two-stage manufacturing path each module followed before ever reaching the construction site.
Stage 2
Fit-out
Modules were transported to a factory in Tuas, western Singapore, where fit-out work — painting, window frames, glazing, doors, wardrobes, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems — was carried out to a near-finished state, running in parallel with structural work elsewhere rather than sequentially on site.
Stage 3
Stacking and core coordination
On site, tower cranes rated for concrete PPVC's heavier loads stacked modules concurrently with construction of the towers' central concrete core, in a sequence designed so neither process delayed the other. The first module was installed 7 April 2017, the last on 12 April 2018.
Manufacturing note

Splitting structural precast from fit-out let both processes run in parallel rather than sequentially — a key part of how the project compressed its schedule, and the reason the manufacturing split is as important to this case as the stacking sequence itself.

Nearly two thousand individually manufactured concrete boxes, installed in almost exactly one year, each requiring precise alignment with its neighbours to hold structural continuity through the full height of the tower.

A conventional cast-in-place programme for the towers was projected at around 36 months. With PPVC, the project was delivered in around 30 months — roughly six months, or about 17 per cent, faster by simple calendar comparison; no separately published industry figure exists for the saving. The Clement Canopy remains a reference project for modular construction at high-rise scale.

For further reading, see Modular Installation Erection Engineering, which places PPVC and volumetric stacking sequencing in a wider sector context.

Related case studies: Ichthys LNG Modules · Wuhan Modular Hospitals · 461 Dean Street

Sources: Dragages Singapore — the Bouygues subsidiary that designed and built the towers: PPVC scope, module casting in Senai and fit-out in Tuas; ArchDaily; Building Design + Construction — crane selection and offsite percentage. Clement Canopy (140 m) was the tallest modular concrete building at its 2019 completion; taller modular towers have since been built. Module counts are published as both 1,866 and 1,899 depending on the source.