Having lived in apartments before buying this terrace house near Sembawang Hills, the Phua family didn’t need their home to be massive, but simply comfortable for all of them.
They got the help of Wu Yen Yen of Genome Architects to design their three-storey home around the view of the large field that sits behind. Yen Yen came up with a flexible design for the house. Rather than typically stacking each floor on top of the other, she designed the home to have interlocking high volume spaces. “The play of volume helps all the rooms to be arranged on the linear narrow plot of land to get a view of the rear field,” she says.
The double volume dining and living areas allow for bigger and more windows, which instantly draw light into the otherwise dim space that terrace houses are notorious for.
Connecting the floors is the staircase, smack in the middle of the house. Yen Yen deliberately made it a light structure with thin metal rods and steel plates. From afar, it can almost pass off as an art sculpture.
Rather unusually, the common areas such as the kitchen, dining and living areas are on the upper floors, while the bedrooms are on the ground floor. As a result, the master bedroom has private access and view of the open field.
A small bathroom is partially hidden by a wall of ventilation blocks, to allow for some breeze and light to enter while ensuring privacy. The double volume dining area sits next to the kitchen on the second floor.
Photos by Tan Hai Han and Gin Tay
This story was first published in The Business Times. Click here to read the original story.