Located at the end of a long driveway, the site is surrounded on all four sides by neighbouring plots, with no road frontage. Built for a family unit of a couple and their 3 sons, the client wanted communal spaces to entertain different groups of people at any one time as well as to have connectivity to outdoors.

In land-scarce Singapore where land cost a premium, there is a tendency to maximise built-up area. The house was conceived as a 2 storey building. As the family unit is not sizeable, the spaces consist primarily of communal spaces and minimal bedrooms for the family; instead of maximizing built-up area, resulting in possibly many rooms with redundant function.

The spacious communal areas for entertainment, living and dining are organized on the ground plan, forming a large base, for the private zone of the bedrooms and rooftop garden on the 2nd storey. Structural provisions are provided at the current 2nd storey landscaped garden area for future expansion when the family unit becomes extended. The 2nd storey garden area reclaimed a landscaped ground plane that would otherwise have been lost to built-up areas.

The house is conceptualized to maximize porosity and at the same time to buffer weather elements in the tropics with deep overhangs. The different pockets of communal spaces forms a continuous extroverted space. The pockets of communal spaces are akin to pavilion-like spaces, but rather than connections by linkways, the spaces are connected by verandahs that co-join the pockets of spaces on the ground floor. Each pocket of space is defined by a glass sliding system, detailed to express seamlessness between the exterior and interior. When opened or closed, the outdoor and indoor space are continuously redefined, blurring the boundaries between the exterior and interior.

FORMWERKZ ARCHITECTS LLP