The Reflection Upon Relationship to Nature in Iyashi House

Iyashi House is a 3-bedroom private residence nestled in a serene lakeside suburb of Bandung, Indonesia, conceived as a couple’s retirement home and a place of gathering for their extended family and friends.

At first glance, Iyashi House provokes its visitors to close their eyes, let go of digital distractions, and disregard, if only for a moment, the views of the surrounding landscape and otherwise architectural finesse that characterises the house altogether. In the absence of the visual dimension, one can begin to perceive the emerging sound of silence within the space, complemented by distant undertones of suburban nature.

A sensation of soft breeze pulsates through the house, leaving the only tangible demarcation of indoor and outdoor tethered to the material and textural transitions beneath one’s bare feet. The Japanese word ‘iyashi’ bears the meaning of healing, rejuvenation or sense of serenity. This house is designed as a kind of domestic sanctum, immersed in silence, natural light, and picturesque scenery.

The house is gently concealed by perimeter walls, preceded by a short ascending walkway that is framed by alang-alang grass. The main entrance walkway leads into an interior courtyard, fitted with bespoke, pre-fab concrete tiles, and embellished with a single evergreen tree.

The architecture features a sharp juxtaposition of perfectly finished cast-in-situ concrete, matte steel supports, and ironwood roof ceilings. The striking Japanesque roofs are accentuated by an inward offset from the buildings’ concrete walls and bolstered by a steel structure that enables their ‘semi-floating’ appearance and elongated overhangs.

The overall design is composed of two south-facing, interconnected, pitched roof buildings running parallel to each other and a north-facing, flat roof building containing service facilities and an open car garage. The overall sequence of spaces are environmentally optimised to fit the local Sundanese climate, minimising the need for constant maintenance and costly air conditioning.

The left building is a double tiered private living quarters consisting of two guest bedrooms with shared bathroom facilities on the ground level and a master bedroom with an en suite bathroom and balcony on the second level.

The right building is a single-tiered space consisting of an open plan kitchen, dining area, and spacious living room that flows into an outdoor terrace and grass lawn. The terrace is crowned with a four meter long, cantilevering overhang that frames the lakeside vista and generates a kind of funnelling effect that draws the landscape into the house.

Furthermore, the relationship between indoor and outdoor in this instance is distinctly articulated through the shift from the earthy, pleasantly rugged andesite stone tiling the living room hall to the grand terrace, decked with beautifully sun-kissed ulin wood (also known as ironwood). This is merely an example of the project’s array of material compositions, carefully chosen and collectively set to age gracefully with hints of natural weathering, marked by the forces of time.

Of all design details and architectural elements conceived in this residence, the terrace is perhaps the architectural ‘protagonist’ that captures the essence of the house. Thus, the soul lies in the search of a modernised synergy between the indoor and outdoor dimensions of Indonesian tropical living. This notion is further articulated by bespoke handwoven rattan panels spanning across the pitched ceiling of the living and dining area of the house.

Iyashi House attempts to explore, both directly and indirectly, the ways in which a modern Indonesian house can synthesise and reflect upon the nation’s archaic relationship to nature as its source of craft, culture, and wellbeing.