Architecture Wednesday: Surprising Seclusion

This home, dubbed Surprising Seclusion, is located in busy Singapore, with both the front and rear facing busy roads, and sitting right alongside an old house. So, the architect created the home to “look inward.” It’s a triple story home, covered, but with a ventilated courtyard and indoor pool that are the focus of the main floor.

Along one side, a sculptural staircase cantilevers from the wall to reach the family room on the second level. The staircase then continues, with a stepped planter on the side and lit from skylights above, to the private floor.

The entire house is finished in concrete with no shape and gray-faced brick; the bathrooms continue the theme, with brick openings that allow ventilation but not views, along with planting areas that offer a green contrast to the gray scheme.

It seems kind of dark, and kind of monolithic, but with the views on the inside would you really miss the views out?

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Architecture Wednesday: 128G Cairnhill Road

I tend to like a do-over, architecturally speaking, while retaining some of the interesting bits of the original. This house in Singapore does just that.

The architects, RichardHO Architects, decided that building itself was good, structurally speaking, and aesthetically speaking, about the exterior, but the interior didn't work for the way folks like today.

The kitchen and bathrooms were at the back of the house, away from activities of the living and dining rooms and inappropriate for entertaining, so the architects reconfigured the layout to create a seamless living-dining-kitchen volume ... with a Koi pond.

Because, as a homeowner, I'd like to say, 'Oh, the bathroom is just past the Koi pond, beneath the hovering stairs opposite the kitchen.'

The architects kept some of the original elements of the house, like the stairwell topped by a generous sky-light, but they made the stairwell rise around and above the Koi pond. And, of course, once the stair well was once exposed to the elements, it was equipped with a retractable glass roof and blinds that reflect 75% of the heat back into the atmosphere, keeping the internal temperature comfortable.

And the blinds also cast shadows down the stairwell into the main living space, depending on the time of day and the extent to which they are retracted. On moonlit nights, the glass roof can be fully retracted to take in the view.

The second floor is split between the master bedroom and ensuite bathroom, and the nursery and another bedroom. The master bedroom is reminiscent of a luxury hotel suite: a divider at the entrance doubles up as the bed’s headboard, while a bank of wardrobe in a high-gloss white finish line walls on either side. The piece de resistance is the master bathroom, with its view of lush greenery.

The guest room on the attic level functions as the owners study when there are no guests, but it's the surprise at the top that most visitors are after: an outdoor terrace with an infinity edge pool and a panorama of green, the same view shared by the master bathroom.

Like I said, I love the exterior, which retains the history of the building, but when you walk inside, you are suddenly in a whole new world.

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Architecture Wednesday: A House For The Gardener

Even when we had our house in Miami, with its very small yard, I enjoyed "puttering" around in the garden. Okay, maybe I enjoyed saying "puttering" around more than the actual puttering, but I did work in the garden.

And when we bought this house, we bought a much, much much larger yard. And puttering became a chore; now, it's a chore I enjoy, because I like seeing the yard neat and clean and trimmed and tidy....

Or is that my men? I digress.

But, if people live in an urban environment, and like to putter in a garden, what do they do?

Make the house the garden.

And that's what the architect did for this house in Singapore. While the client was mostly concerned with having a space where they could keep an eye on their kids without the need to be in the same space, the architect was also keen on creating a garden house in a very tight semi-detached site where most of the land is occupied by the building footprint.

To that end, they created a vertical wall planting set within a niche along the front boundary wall and added a shrubbery garden atop the carport roof.

Enclosing part of the home's façade on the upper floor is a layer of planting system that was devised to behave more like a curtain wall. Its primary function is to perform as a privacy screen and to keep the rain out. It resembles an open rack, like a shuttered, louvered window, and the planting shelves are designed to accommodate small potted plants that are easily replaceable from any nursery to ensure ease of upkeep. The planting is irrigated from a single pipe on the top shelf, with the run off feeding the pots on the lower tiers.

It keeps the green outside, and brings some garden into the home.

The sloping roof terrace is derived from the staggered section of the house and retained a continuous flow from the indoor. A setting for outdoor dining and barbeque is created in sunken portion of the deck where the mosaic-clad top becomes simultaneously a tabletop, barbeque pit and bench.

The architects liked the idea of "climbing" to the roof terrace as though climbing a small hill. Plus, the inclined plane is also the perfect spot to catch some sun or take a long nap in the afternoon.

Like I said, I like puttering in the garden, but the idea of watering the walls and the roof seems kinda cool, too.

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