Boxed Out

This House is situated in a quiet neighbourhood in Klang Valley. It sits on an oddly-shaped site surrounded by neighbouring homes and a main road. The owner’s brief is to have a luxurious  tropical  family home with a modern flavor.

The initial design stage of the house involved positioning of elements for best functionality. Conceptually, the above ground architectural composition is of two rectangular blocks sitting on slender pilotis. The front block comprises a guest living and dining area on the ground with the master-bedroom on the top floor. And the rear block has the family living and dining on the ground and childrens’ bedrooms on the upper floor. An enclosed walkway bridge connects the bedrooms on the upper floors giving a tropical blend of indoor and outdoor spaces to the family area. A ribbon louvers window cuts around the façade. Rotatable vertical timber louvers lined strategically along this band of windows shield the glazing and regulate how much sunlight reaches the interior, as well as ensuring privacy when required.

On the ground, visitors are welcomed into the home via a generous corridor-lobby. While walking in, visitors will instantly notice a courtyard, a space that blends both indoor and outdoor, soft-scape and hard-scape altogether. It was to be a one-space, with several programs, rather than many spaces with determined boundaries and fixed functions. Trees planted heavily around the perimeter forms a very private enclosure. Visually secured from the outside, the ground plain architecture could then be open and transparent without the owner’s privacy being compromised.

An outdoor living deck with a long 20m pool tops-off the composition, and is usefully spacious enough for social gatherings and parties. Basic architectural principles of orientation, thermal mass, sun-screening and natural ventilation are fundamental to the design. It is a house designed for the tropics, expressed by modern materials and contemporary aesthetics. Every floor is designed to be cross-ventilated. Primary to the design ethos are that breezes are to be encouraged and unhindered.