Rice Barn House Fuses Vernacular Architecture with Contemporary Building Technology

Rice Barn House is designed by responding to the site's environmental condition and celebrating the inherited traditional local construction methodology. Given the compact lot and the client's brief to have sufficient programs in the house, the design approach seeks to fuse Indonesia's vernacular architecture with contemporary building technology to accommodate current living lifestyle. Thus, vernacular architecture elements from lumbung padi (Indonesian rice barn) are incorporated and synthesised with modern material selections.

The house form is inspired by lumbung padi whose structure is built on 4 columns with a ground floor slab raised 2 metres above ground. Characterised by two levels, the traditional barn house is usually built with contrasting spatial qualities: the ground level as an open-sided pavilion and the first level as an enclosed private space. These spatial qualities are associated with living program placements.

The gambrel roof design from lumbung padi is modified into a trapezoid prism holding private programs such as bedrooms and private bathrooms. The roof of the prism is punctured with a circular skylight at the center. The trapezoid's slanted walls are punctured with window openings to supply natural light and allow cross-and-stack ventilation throughout the private quarters.

Nested underneath is an open-plan living room connected by a central spiral staircase. The living room is enveloped with frameless bi-fold doors that blur the outdoor-to-indoor boundary.

Surrounded by continuous terraces and vegetation, the living room mimics the openness of the pavilion from lumbung padi, allowing as much natural wind flow to pass through from all sides. With the shifting lifestyle nowadays, access to natural ventilation is considered to be a significant element in the quality of life which bolsters the openness of pavilion spatial quality.

All other supporting programs are clustered on the ground level to serve the living programs' needs on the levels above. The modernisation of lumbung padi as a traditional house is achieved through applying a selection of modern building materials and technologies that accommodates contemporary lifestyle.