ACCUTE AT 90-DEGREES

Re-built from the ground up, this modern two-storey terrace is inspired by the home owners’ nomadic past in places such as Paris, Sydney, Japan, Singapore and their current home, Malaysia.

Deep within the hysterical boisterousness of JOHOR BAHRU is a house that self-distils into essential, quiet forms. DAVID CONGRAM learns how to seek sanctuary in the 90-degree angle with architects JASON SIM and FION HSU.

In journalism, a right angle is rarely either. In architecture, it’s practically law. Having pronounced it thusly, I can only apologise for the following hypocrisy. There is only one right angle for this article – and it is, squarely, that: the right angle.

You see, right angles occupy a highly singular position in both the politics of taste and mathematics. Of mathematics, Euclid famously theorised the 90-degree angle as (basically) that which could never be any other angle. For him the right angle is foundational, virginal, existing alone so perfectly apart from all of its incalculable obtuse and acute counterparts. In short: it is neither here nor there; neither this nor that – it simply just ‘is’, always as such, revelling in its own peculiar eccentricity.

Meanwhile the right angle in the politics of taste presents just as much astonishing slipperiness. For some it is principally rigid, austere, cold or (dare I say it) unimaginative. And yet for others, the sensibility of flawless corners, perpendicularity and the play of the vertical and horizontal expresses precisely the opposite – the absolute triumph of the imagination. As right angles cannot form in the natural world we, then, created them. They represent, that is, the beauty and the power of our creative, visionary potential.

Nothing quite square about squares, after all. This is what flew straight through my mind when I first glimpsed the JS & Ning Terrace in Malaysia’s Johor Bahru. Designed by the team at s:lab 10 – a practice originally founded in Sydney but operating throughout Australia, Taiwan and Malaysia – it is home to two of Asia Pacific’s most accomplished young architects Fion Hsu and Jason Sim, who also are among s:lab 10’s founding members.

At once insouciant and svelte, discreet and dynamic, their home declares a system of play as paramount through its spatial attuning and negotiation of what is commonly found outdoors suddenly springing up within. And yet, what remains the most hypnotic is the filtration of light throughout the structure. From various internal courtyards, each separate yet interconnected room visually unfurls through a succession of rectilinear frames all delicately reinterpreting the right angle leitmotif.

Semi-permeable balustrades, squared-off recesses, eaves and apertures – their home is a spatial revealing – frame upon frame upon frame where the resulting vista peers out onto … well, nothing. Or, simply, just opening out on a deep ‘within-ness’.

This is not framing as device but framing, itself, as pleasure. Here is orthogonal euphony designed with such inspired care that it plays with perspective and enclosure, of in and out. Or, quite simply, it is a home that plays with the act of creating. Whitewashed brickwork laid in a running bond is echoed through floating timber steps jittering down the wall in delicate 90-degree turns. Trimmed in staggered black steel, the banister re-whispers the alternating gradation of the brickwork – framing a vaulted double-height negative space, drawing the eye to a lively negotiation of angles constantly being reinterpreted in three dimensions. Eventually, what began as a meditation on minimal arrangement around 90-degrees becomes an intricate saga of the space’s essential form.

“The house is tailored to our style of living, depicting what we appreciate from the scale of architecture down to the smallest of items.”

For these two architects, the plan of the home addresses the peculiar need for sanctuary from the sometimes-frenetic pell-mell of Johor Bahru – the Malay Peninsula’s most wildly yet passionately developing urban centre. Throughout the 1990s, state and federal governments channelled considerable funding for the redevelopment of the city as a substantial investment in the vibrant potential of a young, cosmopolitan creative class. In more ways than one, Jason and Fion exemplify the vision developers held.

With a truly impressive portfolio of international projects, the pair is also fain to embrace design as a mode of thinking about the sometimes-unforeseen social costs a programme of mass urban development manifests in a community. “Generally, with landed property in Malaysia”, says Jason, “given that similar properties are not located within a guarded and gated community, security is a definite issue. We took this into thorough consideration when designing the terrace.”

With simplified exteriors bearing marginal windows, the floorplan is oriented largely inwards. Almost formally introspective, embedded interior spaces such as carved out courtyards provide small enclaves of retreat socketed within a broader structure that extolls the virtues of quiet, serenity, thoughtfulness and safety in our spaces and lives.

ABOVE | THE COMPOSITION OF THE MAIN LIVING QUARTERS OF THE HOME IS ACCENTUATED BY A DRAMATIC STAIRCASE THAT DOUBLY SERVES TO DEMARCATE VESTIBULAR ZONES AND THE MASTER SUITE ABOVE.

When I asked for the story behind their home, Jason’s response seemed simple in its off-the-cuff delivery, yet carried profound depth. “We wanted a home that is associated with our living style,” he quietly, assuredly replied. And yes, the space, mood, fittings and elements murmur memories of their travels through places such as Paris, Sydney, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia – but their home’s quiet soul-searching charisma speaks also to an oft-ignored but pressing necessity in our contemporary way of living in design.

In our overstimulated and interconnected (read: over-connected) lives, fractured attention is swiftly becoming a knotty trait of our everyday. Jason and Fion’s home beckons one to step back from the helter-skelter and retreat into the consciousness of a total sensory profusion. Their design tempts the senses not with a clutter of colour and activity but, rather, its absence: natural stone and timber, muted light and the concision of right angles promises deep recesses of slow dwelling and sanctuary on an otherwise small parcel of fifteen-by-six metres in a bustling urban centre of high population density.

In their own words, the home “depicts what we appreciate from the scale of architecture and interiors down to the smallest of items like kitchen accessories”. Reflecting a particularly modern orientation to thoughtful living, essential furnishings are tailored to the functional possibilities of each space; passive spatial arrangement demarcates zones through the changing rhythm of the home seen in the landscape and textures of the ceiling, walls or floor suddenly breaking and changing.

Meanwhile, expanses of unadorned brick and glass – quintessentially contemporary industrial materials – perform a material and textural duet with gleaming flaxen timbers and powdercoated steel tomorrow-proofed against the passing vicissitudes of kitsch.

But, 90-degrees? Everywhere, their home performs a variation on the angular theme from the square-aligned shapeliness of bathroom fittings, minimalist, delicate linework in joinery, all the way through to the peaceful perpendicular flow of the floorplan as you navigate between rooms. Suddenly, I notice the discreet charm of the right angle assuming the material form of creative, thoughtful design. A mode, Jason encourages, “to articulate the future”.