Home Tour: A family of 4's semi-detached at Jalan Belibas, Upper Thomson

When architect, Woon Chung Yen, founder and principal of Metre Architects was presented with this interior renovation project of a 10-year-old semi-detached house along Jalan Belibas in Upper Thomson, he recognised that one of the biggest challenges was how to bring the capacious spaces to life.

“Houses that have been built to maximise their interior floor areas typically result in light wells of minimal dimensions. In this case, it was important that we evoke a sense of poetics, especially for the dimly-lit spaces on the first storey,” he emphasises.

Who Lives Here: A couple in their 40s and their two children
Home: A semi-detached home at Jalan Belibas
Size: 6,534 sq ft (land area)
Interior Designer: Metre Architects

Semi-detached house floor plan

His approach was to first, simplify the floor plan of each space in order to clarify their volumetric characteristics. Thereafter, the peripheral walls were overlaid with various materials or cabinetry to animate the expansive interiors.

Finally came the filling of the spaces with carefully curated or custom-designed furniture pieces to “amplify the volumetric characteristics of each space and to create poetic dialogues between the void (space) and the container (form)”.

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Travertine wall

The layout of the first storey is long and rectilinear, with the living and dining areas at either end. The living room end is defined by a travertine wall with the micro cavities deliberately left unfilled to accentuate its naturally-occurring attributes.

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Lampe Gras 300 pendant lamp

Turning the corner, a solitary Lampe Gras 300 pendant lamp from DCW Editions cuts an artful presence against the sandstone wall backdrop in the living area, perpendicular to the travertine wall.

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These two stone walls are a series of elements that serve to reinforce the linear axis between the living and dining areas. A second sandstone wall on the other side of the staircase landing next to the first, continues towards the dry kitchen and dining room, orchestrating the spatial connection.

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Dry kitchen

Conceived as a ‘folded’ wall due to the recess from the removal of an existing cabinet, it overlaps with a cantilevered storage counter in front of the dry kitchen that was introduced to mitigate this kink.

On the floor, a 13-metre long bespoke rug runs under the sofa and coffee table all the way to the dining table. Overhead, two parallel, recessed light channels further heighten the axial relationship.

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Black walnut dining table

A 3.5-metre long, single-slab, American black walnut dining table is oriented along the linear axis. It sits on a pair of sandblasted, dark-stained veneer supports with a tapered detailing on each of their four sides.

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Living room

These supports form part of a trilogy of sculptural objects sharing similar sandblasted, dark-stained veneer finishes, including an interlocking pair of round, mother-of-pearl coffee tables in the living room, and a custom-made display cabinet behind the sofa.

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Custom sofa cabinet

The cabinet also has a similar tapered detailing as the dining table supports, but in a slightly different scale and proportion.  

On the other side of the dining room opposite the sandstone wall is yet another wall feature that deserves special mention.

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Dining room feature wall

Designed to overcome its dim setting due to the lack of natural daylight, it has turned into a visually-captivating piece of wall art. The 5m x 3.5m composition comprises two circular motifs, the larger one with a diameter of 1.8 metres, which echoes other round geometries around the home, from the main entrance handles and interlocking coffee tables, to the display cabinet behind the sofa.

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Kvadrat acoustic panels

Each of these circular discs are backlit against Kvadrat acoustic panels with two different textiles - one plain and one patterned.

“Juxtaposed against this feature wall, the dining room chandelier creates an imagery of a cloud hovering above the moon. When perceived imaginatively with the 13-metre long carpet, it brings to mind the Tang Dynasty poet, painter, musician and statesman Wang Wei’s poem about the sun setting beside the river,” architect Chung Yen explains.

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Wood Venetian blinds

Relating back to the issue of natural light, although the master bedroom on the second storey enjoys abundant daylight from its ample window openings, privacy is compromised as they face the houses across the road and on higher terrain to the right.

Architect Chung Yen replaced the existing curtains with wooden-slat Venetian blinds that not only address privacy concerns, but also make reference to the horizontality of the travertine and sandstone on the first storey. A different treatment was applied to the fenestrations in the children’s bedrooms.

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Children's bedroom

The windows have been framed with cabinetry to take advantage of the natural lighting when they are working at their desks. The horizontally-applied cabinet laminates again relate to the travertine and sandstone veins.

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Sandstone wall

Architect Chung Yen believes that such associations between different materials make this home a delight to dwell in.

Take the walnut dining table and sandstone wall for example: “The sandstone wall has knots similar to the walnut table. This sparks the question, is sandstone more timber-like, or is the walnut table more stone-like? Or perhaps the geometries of nature are such that different materials such as stone and timber may actually share similar patterns?” 

10-Month renovation

The extent of works involved some minor hacking of walls, reconfiguration of the dry kitchen and new ceiling for the living and dining areas, as well as new cabinetry works and light fixtures. The design and construction took about 10 months to complete and the family moved into their new home in March 2023.  

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