Almost Outside
What are the limits of enclosure for private space? Can we dwell almost outdoors with the merest hint of veils? Linghao Architects designs for air movement and a fluid use of space in this Singaporean home.
It’s a hot Sunday when I visit this porous house in central suburban Singapore – the latest project completed by Linghao Architects. Linghao has walked me through and onto the rooftop of the house, and we’ve settled intuitively on the second-storey bench seat while photographer Fabian Ong documents the place on film. A friend joins us, sitting opposite on the raised floor of one of the kids’ rooms. It’s one of those settings that was purposefully designed to support exactly this kind of casual congregation.
I find myself unable to use the word ‘inside’ to describe where we are, or any part of the house, because the impression is most certainly one of being sheltered rather than contained. The front and rear of the house are open, to the extent that the kids’ hand washing and tooth brushing will occur in full view of the rear neighbours on the second storey. Eventually, plants will do some shielding work, but it’s still early days in the life of this house. The family is yet to move in.
Sitting on the long, low timber bench-slash-table beside a void over the living space, I realise that rather than being confined within a family’s territory, I am beside and between fragments of the neighbourhood and spaces where the residents will dwell. The family will live with its neighbourhood, and by extension, share its daily life with the people around it.
Air moves comfortingly past us as we chat, revealing the key reason for this unusual spatial choreography. “My clients have lived on this site for eight years, but the old house had a very different feeling. There was no air movement; the air became internal,” says Linghao. The new house, obviously, goes to the other extreme to satisfy the clients’ leading desire for air circulation.
“In Singapore we really do have winds,” he says. “The question is how you design in relation to the winds. If you walk the streets and you stay in the somewhat shaded spaces, it’s actually quite comfortable outside. You just need the air movement. Making this house shows that this is actually good enough. It feels comfortable here, and when the glare is not there – when the plants grow – it will be even more so. If you want more comfort, then you can close an area and have a different kind of [mechanical] comfort.”
The house was previously a single-storey abode like its neighbour, and traces of the old home’s presence (the marks of its ceiling joists, for example) have been retained and expressed on the inner face of the adapted boundary wall. This rawness is in keeping with Linghao’s emphasis on tuning in to the natural state of things.
“This is the first project where I’ve used so much timber for making doors. I don’t know if I can do aluminium after this,” he says, citing the energy expended in the processes of making and recycling the metal. “More and more I dislike the word ‘green’. It has no meaning, especially here. You cannot be green if you’re building 50 storeys, no matter what you say.”
The Chengal hardwood he used, he explains, grows extremely slowly and offers incredible strength. “I’ve built a few things in Kuching with recycled Chengal lampposts. Plants had grown all over them and I asked the carpenters if the timber would be ok. ‘Don’t worry!’ they said. ‘If plants are growing on this timber, it means it’s holding moisture. It will be stronger than you and outlive you.’ So naturally we already have materials that have a very long lifespan.”
Our discussion turns to the undulating roof garden (a delight for young children) and the prospect of harvesting food. The plants are mainly edible – a combination of species selected by the owners and what has blown in on the wind or been transported by birds. Spinach and bitter gourd were self-sown, but there’s also Pakistani mulberry, curry, lime and insect-deterring marigolds. In the weeks after my visit, Linghao sends me photos of the garden filling out and yielding melons, tomatoes, pumpkins and grains.
“Living here requires work,” says Linghao, “not only tending the roof garden but being in such an open environment. It’s a different kind of work than turning on the aircon at 24 degrees. But my clients are very game. I even offered to put in blinds, but they wanted to try living without them.” Linghao does seem to attract a rare kind of client – one that relishes in his exploration of gaps, gardens and climate – as with the T House, the House Between a Tree and a
Drain, and others. This is work that compels self assessment along the lines of, “Could I live this way, and should I?” For that, I thank you Linghao.