Siglap Plain 1A - D&B

Occasionally you come across a project that stops you in your tracks. This house is such a project. Located beside a bus stop and nestled into a major-minor road intersection in Singapore’s eastern suburbs, the house commands attention with a predominant use of concrete in an elegantly brutal and simple manner. The concrete is laced with filigreed, patterned timber screens that hold an ambiguous resemblance to East Asian and Islamic motifs. This is a house that confronts its context by challenging the orthodoxies of what is expected within a typical suburban streetscape.

“The clients had not stayed in this region of Singapore before, but there was a certain charm about the district that led them to buy this plot of land,” shares Aamer Taher, Principal and founder of Aamer Architects. He proceeds to direct our view to the two-storey post-war terrace houses across the road and explains: “When our clients appointed us to design their new house, the condition and structure of the original house looked similar to those neighbours. A new build would have required frontal setbacks from both roads that flank the site. That would have greatly reduced the footprint of the house, [making it difficult] to accommodate the necessary spaces. Eventually, we chose to reconstruct the existing house by keeping the existing columns and a single setback, working the plan around this and shielding the interior with a new roof as a means of sculpting the building and giving it a new form.

” The palpable aesthetic determination led Taher and his Associate Ryan Kim to choose concrete as the new roofing material due to its inherent plasticity and robustness. These qualities made it easier for the form to be calibrated and voids to be strategically opened up, allowing views and light to enter the house. The concrete skin was further developed by making the roof similar to the walls. As Kim shares, “By allowing the form to touch the ground, the roof is given parity with the walls. This blurs the distinction between the two elements.” The pervasive sense of honesty in construction that this instils belies the duo’s highly disciplined and committed structural approach. As Taher reveals, “This was our first time working with off-form concrete to such an extent, and it was the contractor’s first time using the material. That meant rounds of discussion and review before we managed to get the raw state of the concrete to look acceptable for the clients to live in. We went down to the details of designing the groove lines to conceal the lighting conductor on the roof.”