But there will be other attractions at the resort too. From an ice-skating rink and indoor canals for water taxis to floating pavilions and, of course, the casino.

Ask Mr Safdie, however, which facets of this "urban sector" will take peoples' breath away, and he will say not one, but all facets.

"Everything about the design of Marina Bay Sands™ is about thinking through the experience with people in it. I cannot single out a particular feature because this philosophy permeates through the design.

"How to make a 2,500-room hotel complex both fun and intimate, the exciting experience with a sense of escape and the uplift the people will get enjoying the Sky Park, be it at the public observatory or seeing the city above the vanishing point at the horizon of the swimming pool.

"I believe that meandering through the Grand Arcade (indoors and outdoors), viewing the city from the amphitheatre roof of the ArtScience Museum, partaking in a convention with a magnificent view of the Bay and downtown from the (convention) areas, walking down the upper promenade overlooking the project from the roof of the casino buildings, all these are people experience elements."

Mr Safdie, an Israeli architect, who has designed iconic buildings and national libraries to airports and whole cities, and his team, Moshe Safdie and Associates, were selected in May 2006 to design MBS, which is being billed as one of the largest investments in the world for a single integrated resort (IR). The resort is expected to pump in an additional $2.7 billion (or about 0.8%) to Singapore's annual Gross Domestic Product and provide about 30,000 jobs throughout the economy by 2015.

In the end, he said, the project as a whole will become a "wow factor".

"While the hotel with its skypark would be 'wow'...the ArtScience Museum is a 'wow', the promenade with the back up of its shopping arcade are unprecedented spaces anywhere in the world.

"It is the sum total that is going to make the Marina Bay Sands™ a memorable and extraordinary place."