After moving into a flat in their late teens, the Tan brothers, who are now both in their forties, decided to move back into the semi-detached house that they grew up in as children. The tight-knit brothers wanted to continue living together even after the elder brother got married. “We wanted to still live together, but there wasn’t enough room in the flat,” says the elder brother.
Architect Foo Yong Kai, who runs his eponymous firm, designed the new home, which looks like a single house on the outside, but in fact is two houses, one for each brother.
The living, dining and family rooms where the family gather have wide, expansive glass doors that slide and fold open to embrace the landscape.
Bedrooms have small windows for privacy. “We deliberately scaled down the house, so that it would not look out of place in the neighbourhood,” says Yong Kai.
For example, the dimensions of rooms, doors, windows and such are kept modest and comfortable, built no bigger than they need to be.
A small garden in the airwell.
Sustainability was a key consideration in the design of the homes. While the internal spaces such as the individual rooms have air-conditioning, other areas such as the stairwell have been designed to be naturally ventilated.
An open air bathroom for better ventilation.
In the attic of the first house is a family room with an outdoor terrace. The yellow swing on the terrace is the very same one that the brothers used to spend hours on as kids.
The design of the entire 4,000 sq ft house is fairly simple, but what makes it special, is that it has been designed in and around the garden. “The house is a composition in concrete, brick, paint and plants,” says the architect.
Photos by Albert Lim KS & Ariffin Jamar
This story was first published in The Business Times. Click here to read the original story.
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- Garden
- Semi-Detached House