Room to Grow

ubiquitous terrace houses are generally uniform in appearance and notorious for interiors devoid of sufficient daylight and cross ventilation. A retired couple, recent returnees from the United Kingdom, had inherited a double-storey terrace house located in the suburb of Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur. Avid gardeners and fans of wide, open spaces, they turned to architect Cherng Yih Lee of local firm formzero to transform their home into a physical representation of their lifestyle.

The concept came from two directions. ‘Firstly, in order to subvert the typology of conventional Malaysian terrace houses, our design strategies included merging the streetscape with the house, blurring the boundaries between public and private, dematerialising the architectural facade and contrasting its scale from its neighbours,’ Lee explains. Secondly, the architects addressed the owners’ wish to have plenty of garden space and vegetation along with large internal spaces. ‘After we maximised the volume of the house, we used vegetation to create a “skin” that wraps the house from front to back and top to bottom,’ Lee says. ‘By doing so, the vegetation becomes a new view when you look out, instead of looking at the streetscape.’

These two overarching ideas were merged to create what is now appropriately known as the Planter Box House, with its cascading concrete planter boxes filled with more than 40 types of edible plants on every floor. The internal spaces were stripped to bring in ample natural light and cross ventilation, most notably in the groundfloor space that is now bookended by glass walls and windows. On one side, a double-volume kitchen and dining area with full-height glass windows was carved out to open up the back of the house, which faces a green wall.

Budgetary constraints meant the choice of finishes was limited, so Lee kept it simple with exposed concrete, uniform tiles, painted steel and white paint. Apart from being low maintenance in the long run, this also celebrates the clients’ love for culturally meaningful design, especially in the concrete finish of the planter boxes themselves. Lee says that after testing out many methods to get the right texture for the concrete, ‘The clients found and sourced split bamboo produced by the Orang Asli people known as Temuan, from Seremban. We then used it to imprint the bamboo texture on the concrete planter boxes.’

Lee says that initially the whole neighbourhood was rather hostile to the monolithic concrete structure, which in its bare state looked more like a bunker. However, now that the plants have grown in, aided by the irrigation system that the clients designed and maintain themselves, the sentiment has changed, especially when they started to share their harvest with their neighbours.

The architect says that he had his own reservations about the building’s final shape, since it was defined by its planting. He shared his concerns with a visiting professor: ‘His advice was that I only completed the first half, leaving the second half to the owner to continue working on. I have learnt that this is a project whose final appearance I cannot control. It will keep changing with time.’

Text

Jennifer Choo

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