Studio Talk: 03

WINDOW HOUSE

January 2016 Square Rooms Magazine

We are thrilled for Window House to be featured in January 2016’s edition of Square Rooms magazine in the article “Tailored to Perfection”, and we certainly hope that you will enjoy reading about it too! Do drop us an email enquiry if you would like to know more about our work!

“Tailored to Perfection”

Designed to suit the homeowners’ needs and wants exactly, this home ticks all the boxes despite not having an overarching theme.

“A house should be a home, reflecting your lifestyle and preferences rather than a specific style,” says designer Liew Kok Fong of Studio Super Safari when we asked what theme he went for in this apartment, which is home to a pair of thirty-something professionals. The home appears to have none of the usual interior concepts we are used to seeing. What we get instead, is a space that simply reflects who the homeowners are.

Style-wise, there is a mix of dark and light elements. The communal zones see plenty of cool tones and textural surfaces. There are the stone-like tiles seen in the living and dining rooms’ flooring, the cement screed wall behind the TV as well as the dark woodgrains in the kitchen cabinets. In contrast, the private and semi-private sanctuaries of the master bedroom and the study adopt a warmer palette of teak wood flooring, the wood of which was sourced from Vietnam.

There is a mishmash of furniture pieces, chosen only because they appealed to the homeowners’ tastes. They were bought from stores like BoConcept, Crate & Barrel, White Woods and Proof Living. The assortment of designer chairs – all notably different – around the study and dining tables were gifts from the wife’s sister or taken from their existing collection. The home is also strewn with art pieces, a collection that the homeowners have amassed over the years from their travels. These provide personality and colour, as well as stories to tell when they have guests over.

The current configuration of the home departs dramatically from the initial layout. The previous plan called for a major spatial reorganisation in order to better accommodate the couple’s living habits. Two original rooms – located at the centre of the unit – were knocked down to create a bigger master bedroom and communal space. This was also done to position the living and dining areas in the middle of the apartment instead, providing easy access from the eating area to the kitchen. Previously, one had to walk through a short and narrow corridor from the dining room to the cooking space as there was no direct access. A study was also constructed and cordoned off using glass sliding doors. While this space is currently used by the mistress of the house most often as she has to work from home, it has the potential to be converted into a kids’ room in the future.

A few add-ons help to keep things looking neat and tidy. A false ceiling conceals the electrical wiring and air-conditioning ducts. False walls were constructed to cover a series of “dead” and awkward nooks around the floor-to-ceiling windows in the communal areas that were a result of the spatial configuration. And the bomb shelter cum store room is stowed away behind a storage shelf with closed and open compartments along the entranceway.

The home, while lacking in a unified design theme, feels just right because the design details cater exactly to the needs and wants of its occupants. To designer Kok Fong, that was all that was needed to create the perfect home.

[“Tailored to Perfection”, in Square Rooms, Issue 129, January 2016 (Singapore: Key Editions, 2016), pp. 86-93.]