Hotel in nature: Inside the worlds best new skyscraper | Lifestyle [Video]

Singapore (CNN) — Tropical plants creep up vast structural columns and dangle from ledges, hundreds of feet above the ground. Guests lounge around a lagoon-like swimming pool nestled away from the scorching midday sun. A series of soaring terraces sit within the tower’s frame, like caverns carved into a mountainside.

This is Singapore’s Pan Pacific Orchard, which has just been named the world’s best new tall building by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). Announcing the award in a press release Wednesday, the industry group described the tower as a “hotel in nature” that demonstrated a “groundbreaking approach to high-density urbanism.”

Despite the lofty accolades, the lush open-air cavities of the 461-foot-high structure feel surprisingly intimate. “You experience the hotel not as a very big building, but at more of a neighborhood scale,” said architect Hong Wei Phua of WOHA, the Singaporean firm behind the design, as he toured CNN …