Having to spend more time at home these few months, Andra Matin, one of Indonesia’s most prominent architects, is rediscovering the wonder his well-lived, tropical minimalist home.
Located in Bintaro, south of Jakarta, the three-storey house occupies a 320-sqm trapezoidal and sloping plot. It is home to Andra, his interior designer wife Dite, their three children, and dozens of cats. Before the pandemic brought the world to a standstill, it was one of the famous hang out spots of Jakarta’s creative community. Andra’s eponymous practice andramatin studio is just a few doors down from the house, and his 30-odd staff members often came over for discussions and brainstorming.
Whenever he can, Andra would open his home to visiting architects, creatives and design students. It took six years to complete, and at first glance the design seems brutally minimalist. The material palette consists of exposed concrete and reclaimed wood and very little else. The living-dining area has no walls. The children’s beds are enclosed in capsules. The master suite is located inside a separate volume that looks like a shed; its master bath is in the basement. And somehow, Andra’s deft hands make the design work.
But the design offers warmth and appreciation for the tropical climate like no other. Here’s a gallery of snapshots taken by the architect himself.
Seen from the main road, the house’s raw aesthetic sometimes leads passersby to dismiss it as an abandoned construction. But this brutal exterior hides a warm home that embraces nature and offers a unique and cinematic spatial experience.
A cooling pond and a frangipani tree welcome residents and guests to the premise.
The timber used for the house is a local Indonesian variety called ulin or Borneo ironwood, one of the heaviest and most durable timbers in the world. It is immune to insects, fungi and marine borers, making it a popular choice for nautical construction.
The ground level houses the carport, cat houses, the service quarter and the Japanese-style library. The pathway from the entrance leads to a ramp to the second floor.
The second level is essentially one large timber deck that hosts the kitchen, living and dining area, a lounge and a lap pool – all of which feature no walls. This floor is the most public area of the home, where Andra and Dite frequently entertain guests.
It is also the favourite spot of many of their cats, most of which are local strays that Dite, an diehard cat lover, rescued.
“One of the joys of being in the tropical climate is the indoor-outdoor connection. It’s either a sunny day or a rainy or something in between. You can live with a bit of sun and rain, so can ironwood and concrete,” Andra says when asked if he’s not afraid of the wear and tear of having everything exposed to the elements.
Dite shared that once, Andra left a suitcase open in the dining room and one of their newly rescued cats snuck inside. The cat was eventually discovered at the airport before Andra’s flight, petrified but otherwise unharmed. They named him Koper, Indonesian for ‘suitcase’.
Initial calculations showed that in order to realise the design, Matin would need about 30 cubic meters of the precious ironwood.
After a long period of patient search (hence the six years construction time) he managed to source 60% of it from dismantled docks in Bali, working around the scarcity of the material and contributing to the environment in one stroke.
View of the main house from the master bedroom suite.
The master suite is located inside a separate volume connected to the main house via a ramp.
“Yes, most people thought it was a shed,” shares Andra.
The master suite comprises the master bedroom, which is located next to the entrance, and a study and a master bath in its basement. The master bedroom is minimalist – just a mattress and a couple of pillows next to a window.
Playfully dubbed ‘the dungeon’, the master bedroom’s basement houses a bathroom, wardrobe and sitting area. Natural light is allowed into the space via a skylight in the corner.
View of the tree from the master bathroom. The rain is allowed to pour inside to nourish the tree.
The sloping plot allows the house to have three levels without sticking out like a sore thumb in its neighbourhood.
The gentle slopes of the ramp are a perfect perch for the cats.
“At one point we have about 60 cats,” Dite confesses. “Today we have about 20-30, most of which roam freely in the neighbourhood.” The pedigreed ones are kept safe in the cat houses on the first floor.
The service quarter feature a spiral timber staircase overgrown with piper betel.
The third floor houses the children’s bedrooms. Daughter Ditra gets a room to herself while twin boys Dian and Andi share another. Each of the beds is housed inside a pristine white box a la capsule hotels.
“I was inspired by our family trip to Japan where we slept in a capsule beds comfortably,” he says. “There’s only so much space we need to sleep and restricting the stimuli to minimum actually made us more restful.”
The windows on this level are located at different heights to facilitate cross ventilation.
The skylight on the roof garden has a little gap that’s now overgrown with grass.
The home is a canvas that captures the light poetically.
The rooftop garden features a rain-harvesting pool. It is a calming space that invites one to pause and breathe.
The house has won many international accolades, and it is considered as one of the successful ‘radical’ tropical home that has inspired a generation of architects.
- TAGS:
- Indonesia
- Landed House
- Minimalist