House tour: A home in Singapore, inspired by the gardens of Suzhou

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House tour: A home in Singapore, inspired by the gardens of Suzhou

For this family of five, living in a habitation filled with rock gardens, soothing h2o features and ample greenery gives the impression of being in a classical Chinese landscape.

31 October 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 04 Jul 2022 xi:52PM)

There are many scenic aspects to this house designed by Freight Architects, starting with the arrival sequence. Past the gate, stepping-stones trace a gurgling koi pond. It leads to cantilevering steps floating up a granite wall, and so at the superlative, a moving picture of the puddle sequinned with sunlight and shadowed by feathery foliage.

A left turn leads to a night, exaggerated portal that camouflages the main entrance door. When flung open, i enters not into an enclosed space simply a luxuriant garden. There is no token landscaping here, but towering copse and grassy mounds. The portal also brings focus to a midnight blackness screw staircase. Looking back out, it frames a majestic 180-twelvemonth-sometime Olive tree.

This orchestrated welcome is i of many throughout the i,250 sqm house that draws from concepts of the famous Classical Gardens of Suzhou in China. While many landed homes look out at landscaping, this firm is immersed in information technology.

Eschewing the enormity of surrounding mansions, this business firm'due south massing is split into several blocks or "pavilions" surrounding the primal garden, separated past interstitial outdoor spaces. The fragmented plan ways the garden tin be glimpsed from many parts of the house, rendering the its name "House of Views" apt.

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"Nosotros created pockets of gardens or 'scenes' that connect the various volumes," said Kee Jing Zhi, co-founder of the firm.

It is an almost literal response to the possessor's cursory for an open home, which should be modern as well. He stays here with his married woman and three grown sons – 2 working and i university-going – who might keep to alive under the same roof fifty-fifty subsequently they midweek and class their ain families.

Several perimeters shape the programmatic layout. Firstly, the site is blessed with a broad 47m frontage. This, and its location in a tree conservation area bequeath information technology ample leafy views – although the compages too had to thread advisedly around a 15m-high conserved Angsana tree in the driveway.

Kee's layout features the ambulatory quality of Chinese gardens. In making the occupants traverse naturally ventilated corridors as they become between blocks, they are extracted from hermetic environments – fifty-fifty if for a moment – every bit they become most their daily routines. Framed views, articulated thresholds and advisedly composed tableaus slow down and embellish these routes.

The cake on the entrance's right contains the double-storey living and dining room, and mezzanine library; the one on the left by the puddle contains the family room below and master bedroom in a higher place; and the rear blocks encompass utilities and other bedrooms.

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A DIALOGUE WITH NATURE

"The living room is for formal events and guest entertainment. The drinking glass doors tin can open up up and slide entirely into the corner to provide a panoramic view of the surroundings," said Kee.

To deepen this dialogue with nature, the mezzanine library is accessed via exiting the living room and then meandering upwards the spiral staircase. In the process, the garden is encountered again.

"The screw staircase is a sculptural feature forming role of the garden scene," shared Kee. At night, the staircase's underside is a glowing ribbon of white. Lit with LED strips, its curves are amplified in the darkness.

Each of the sons' bedrooms comes with an en-suite bath and study, which can become future nurseries. One of the bedrooms opens to a raised Jacuzzi – another cleverly incorporated Fengshui characteristic – backed past metropolis views.

In the basement garage is a 2d archway that is no less impressive than the starting time-storey portal. At the garage's end wall, sunlight illuminates a rock garden. It is just a modest prelude to the dramatic view past the archway door of a sizeable courtyard floored with loose gravel and roofed with azure heaven.

This courtyard is an abstracted version of the garden upstairs. A cluster of organically formed marble pieces personifies mountains rising from an ashen sea. On the side, a Carrera marble washbasin stands, its form one-half chiselled like a found relic.

Beyond the courtyard, a cobalt onyx marble slab hangs like a painting, with colouration that mimics sky and clouds. "The basement courtyard is another 'scene' created for a theatrical entrance. It likewise brings natural light and ventilation down to the family entertainment room [adjacent to the courtyard], said Kee.

Blackened aluminium screens wrapping the spaces above the courtyard frame the spectacle like moving-picture show cut-outs. The color adheres to the architecture's dominant monochromatic palette.

"The firm's materials are controlled to predominantly have the [neutral] colours of a Chinese garden – akin to an ink calligraphy," said Kee.

"The house's materials are controlled to predominantly have the [neutral] colours of a Chinese garden – akin to an ink calligraphy." – Kee Jing Zhi

As in the Classical Gardens of Suzhou, Kee employs many water and rock elements, which represent contrasting qualities of fluidity and strength. His application is subtle and streamlined, rather than kitschy. Information technology embodies the sense of balance found in the historic precedents, which were conceived as microcosms of the natural world.

"We have a deep appreciation of marble and stone because of their elegance and unique [characteristics]. We enjoyed creating color contrasts utilising dissimilar variations," said the owner.

For example, pearl-white granite clads the architecture; grey granite the external floors; and silver travertine, the starting time-storey walls and floors. In the family unit room, an acid-washed blackness marble wall juxtaposes with the gleaming whiteness of surrounding surfaces.

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Stone OF AGES

Stone is not merely used in the architecture. It is found in the joinery every bit well. In the basement entertainment room and first-storey dry kitchen, the counters feature St Laurent marble and granite countertops respectively.

Kee and the owner worked closely on the stone and marble selection, fifty-fifty travelling away to source for specific types. To avert having the house look similar a "stone gallery", Kee was careful to regulate diversity, balancing their employ with American walnut floors on bedroom and staircase floors.

The bathrooms employ the same textile and colour subject area, but see more textural experimentation. Bathtubs and washbasins are formed from white Carrera marble, which contrast with black pulverisation-coated, perforated patterned screens filtering low-cal and views.

Black granite walls have curved, bevelled profiles, and on the white Carrera marble floors sit organically-shaped granite platforms with both rough and smooth surfaces. This tactility and muted tonality give the bathrooms a cavernous grapheme.

The owner specially appreciates the house's openness. Kee's strategy replaces expressionless ends with pictorial vistas. Apart from gestures such as recycling the previous house's old wooden beams into outdoor platforms and staircases, the house'southward planning makes information technology inherently sustainable.

"Its massing is kept relatively narrow to allow for rooms to have windows on both n-due south sides for natural ventilation and light. Opening upwards gaps in between blocks creates natural wind tunnels, and walls on the e-west elevations buffer directly heat and glare," explained Kee.

The owner particularly appreciates the house'due south openness. (Photo: Studio Periphery/Marc Tan)

He employs these ideas not just in the houses he designs, but as well in projects like the childcare and senior care centres that he has come to specialise in. The Sengkang Riverside Large Childcare Center, with its porous, armadillo-similar green roof, is i.

Regardless of scale or function, such contextual considerations are universally benign to its users.

House tour: A home in Singapore, inspired by the gardens of Suzhou

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