Fusionopolis

This is a probably useless informative post about Fusionopolis, where I work. It's triggered by a lady who asked me for directions yesterday --- an occurrence I am usually terrified of, because I have terrible sense of direction and often end up having to apologetically tell the person I cannot help.

Anyway, the lady asked where "Fusionopolis 3" was. On my confusion (there are only "Fusionopolis One" and "Fusionopolis Two", no "Fusionopolis Three"), she clarified that she was looking for "3 Fusionopolis Way". We were then at the lobby of my office building, at 1 Fusionopolis Way (a.k.a. Fusionopolis One). I had no idea which building was number 3, but the address I could look up on my Street Directory mobile app... and it turned out to be Symbiosis, which is just another tower in the same building.

Ooooo.

After turning around a little (as I said, terrible sense of direction) I was then able to point her to the tower entrance.

A colleague I told about this was equally puzzled that the towers had different addresses. The buildings and towers around here (and perhaps in most business parks?) are mostly referred to by name, and block numbers are not prominently displayed (if at all; I haven't noticed any) nor remembered by the population. So even though having the company name and street address is sufficient to locate it, it may not be easy without noting the building/tower name. Add to it the similar road names, Fusionopolis Way/Place/Link/... although this feature is of course not unique across Singapore (so-and-so Street/Road/Drive/Ave...).

To further complicate things, the name "Fusionopolis" is somewhat overloaded. It is supposed to be the name of a whole complex, but this has been built in phases, and people who work here have been calling the first completed three-towered building just "Fusionopolis". The building itself has the name "Fusionopolis" on the main entrance, so. =P Its proper name is now "Fusionopolis One", with a huge signboard in front of the building to remove all doubts on the issue. The last completed (also three-towered) building next to it is given a similar signboard proclaiming it "Fusionopolis Two". (Trivia: It was actually phase 2A in the planning, but as it houses scientific labs with very specific requirements, its development was delayed so much that all the remaining phases were completed before it.)

Here is an image from a flyer by JTC, the "master planner and developer" of one-north, showing the whole Fusionopolis complex. The flyer was distributed as promotional material back when the complex wasn't fully completed yet, so not all names were finalized.

Just for fun, I looked up the addresses of all buildings in the complex. There is quite a variation!

Fusionopolis One (Phase 1)	Connexis North Connexis South	1 Fusionopolis Way, S(138632)
	Symbiosis	3 Fusionopolis Way, S(138633)
Fusionopolis Two (Phase 2A)	Innovis	2 Fusionopolis Way, S(138634)
	Kinesis	4 Fusionopolis Way, S(138635)
	Synthesis	6 Fusionopolis Way, S(138636)
Phase 2B	Solaris	1 Fusionopolis Walk, S(138628)
Phase 3	Nexus	1 & 3 Fusionopolis Link, S(138542-3)
Phase 4	Sandcrawler	1 Fusionopolis View, S(138577)
Phase 5	Galaxis	1 & 3 Fusionopolis Place, S(138522-3)
	Pixel	10 Central Exchange Green, S(138649)
	one-north Residences	7 & 9 one-north Gateway, S(138642-3)

Here is a map I adapted from OneMap, showing all the small roads that lead to the addressing of buildings (excluding the residential complex). Why the jumps in block numbers? I don't know.

So... if you ever need to find a particular office in Fusionopolis, maybe this would be helpful! XD In the early days, the name was really unfamiliar to a lot of people, including taxi drivers. And some kept saying "Fusion-polis" instead. Now that it's been around for a while (and that PM Lee has been here twice, for televised grand openings), hope there is no more such problem.