Esplanade station features an Art-in-Transit artwork A Piece of Ice-Clear Heart by Lim Mu Hue.

[13] Through a public poll conducted from 26 March to 9 May 2004 to replace its working name "Convention Centre",[14] "Esplanade" garnered more votes at 49% against "War Memorial" at 41%.

The reopening was marked with a celebration as Suntec City Mall offered goodies and organised music and line dancing performances.

[26] In addition to the Esplanade, the three-level station[27] is connected to the various developments surrounding the junction of Bras Basah Road, Raffles Boulevard and Nicoll Highway.

[1] Surrounding cultural landmarks include War Memorial Park, Raffles Hotel and the Padang, while the station serves retail and commercial buildings such as Marina Square, Raffles City Singapore, Suntec Convention Centre, Suntec City Mall and South Beach Tower.

[32] Commissioned as part of the Art-in-Transit programme, a showcase that integrates public artwork in the MRT network, A Piece of Ice-Clear Heart by Lim Mu Hue is displayed at the station.

[33] The 8.6-by-15.1-metre (28 by 50 ft) mural[27] consists of seven pieces of woodblock prints featuring scenes of shadow puppetry and other performances that were popular during the early days of Singapore.

[33][35] The artwork is a collage of Lim's early works,[34] including Backstage Heroes, Puppet Masters and Teochew Opera Singing.

Karen Lim at the time hoped to bring more awareness to woodblock printing, as it was getting rarer in Singapore with fewer artists utilising it.

Meanwhile, Lim travelled to China (accompanied by his two daughters) to observe puppet masters in action to accurately depict them in his work.

Resizing to a higher resolution from the original smaller prints, the work had to be digitally altered for it to fit on the slanted wall so that it did not look distorted when viewed from the ground.