A Weekend Home for Calm & Creativity
New & Kawakami Architects renovated this compact home in Singapore to become a family’s charming weekend residence. Studio principals Yi Tian New and Hiroshi Kawakami share more
Design Anthology: How did you first meet the client?
Yi Tian New (YN): We designed a home for the clients 15 years ago, when we were still working as young architects at our previous design office. The family later relocated back to the Netherlands, the husband’s home country, but we stayed in touch.
Can you tell us about them and their lifestyle?
YN: One is a banker and the other is an artist who paints, makes ceramics and cannot resist collecting art objects and folk crafts. Their entire collection is spread across their properties since no single house can hold all the items. The couple loves wine and conversation, and every meal with them is joyful and sincere.
Their eldest daughter is a fashion designer who lives in Paris with her own young daughter. Their two younger sons have recently finished high school and have a lot of interest in gaming design and music. Since the boys needed to return to Singapore for national service, the family acquired a small residence as their weekend house. It’s a place for the sons to return home after their weekly training and for the rest of the family to fly in for get-togethers. They also plan to host Christmas parties with even more relatives and friends.
What was their brief to you for the project?
Hiroshi Kawakami (HK): The family relayed stories of living in a farmhouse back in the Dutch countryside, with tall, pitched roofs and attic storage only accessible by ladders. These attics had windows that looked down into the main volume of the house. The family really enjoyed their time in the farmhouse and have plenty of fun memories.
Their brief was to create a house that was fun and compact with plenty of hidden storage. It needed to be good enough for everyone to have a place to return to when they’re in Singapore, but the rooms didn’t need to be large or luxurious, they just wanted their own spots to pursue their interests. For the husband, it was a place to read quietly. For the wife, it was a great kitchen and a table to make drawings at. The boys wanted soundproof zones for gaming or jamming sessions.
What’s unique about the building and the location?
HK: There are several interesting points about this unusual compact house, which is made up of just 55 square metres of indoor space and 40 square metres of external patio deck.
The geometry of the house is staggered in a triangular shape, with a large amount of external space compared to indoor spaces. This external space also happens to include a small private pool, which is actually what drew the family to the home in the first place.
The original plan had the main bedroom next to the pool, so we flipped the bedroom with the living room, meaning the former is in a private corner and the pool becomes the visual highlight at the end of the gallery hallway.
Please tell us a little about the material choices for the space.
YN: The floor in the living area is polished cement sand screed, a neutral base for the whitewashed walls and black timber carpentry. The patio’s original ceramic floor tiles were decked over with composite timber to create a homogeneous level between the outdoor and indoor spaces. In the wet areas like the kitchen and bathrooms, mosaic wall tiles have unfinished clay edges and level drops are executed gently with a single piece of tile.
The home also has plenty of customised metalwork in the form of the hanging screen racks in the kitchen and the wall rails on both sides of the gallery hallway, which integrates lighting tracks for illuminating the artworks. These wall rails are for hanging metal ladders to reach the storage in the loft ceiling. Perforated metal door panels are used to screen off appliances in the kitchen while keeping a sense of spatial depth.
Do you have a favourite element or design detail in the project?
HK: The central skylight along the gallery hallway is clearly the main focal point — the skylight is possible thanks to the exaggerated ceiling height and the profile is based on the family’s anecdotes of living in the farmhouse. But our favourite detail is the experience of peeping into the hallway from the hatch window above the ceiling storage, where only a very small viewing frame is possible.
Images by Khoo Guo Jie
