A cluster of 12 heritage bungalows in Rochester Park in Buona Vista will house a mix of office, retail and food outlets as part of a new integrated development to be built by the end of next year.

These black-and-white bungalows, some of which used to be leased out to food and beverage operators, will soon be part of Singapore's first campus-style integrated development spread across 2.4ha of land in one-north, said CapitaLand in a press statement yesterday.

Rochester Commons, the 400,000 sq ft project developed and managed by the company, will have a 17-storey Grade A office tower.

Of the 12 bungalows, seven are for offices and the remaining five for food and beverage or retail use.

The development cost for Rochester Commons is around $550 million. It will also have a hotel that will be operated by CapitaLand's lodging unit, The Ascott Limited, under the Citadines Connect brand.

One of the key features of the development will be Catapult, South-east Asia's first shared executive learning centre that will use technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality to deliver training programmes.

The centre, which focuses on areas such as leadership and innovation, is aimed at grooming executives for leadership agility and equipping them with future-ready skills.

Some of its learning approaches have already been trialled at Catapult's showroom at the Bridge+ co-working space in the Ascent building at Singapore Science Park 1. The showroom's centrepiece is a 180-degree immersive screen that allows shared VR viewing experience during workshops and is equipped with virtual conferencing capabilities.

CapitaLand Singapore's chief executive Tan Yew Chin said: "As companies and individuals adapt to the post Covid-19 environment, executive education and reskilling will be increasingly important."

"Catapult is designed to facilitate cross-learning and networking in a state-of-the-art campus. Catapult will also feature an online platform where learners and knowledge providers can learn, co-create and innovate for the future economy."

CapitaLand said the development of Rochester Commons is in line with the Government's vision of a world-class learning ecosystem in the research and knowledge hub of one-north.

Designed by global architecture firm Gensler, Rochester Commons will feature a single digital identity access that allows tenants to move through the entire development via facial recognition, QR code scanning or access cards.