Inspirations Behind a Healthy House

Budi Lim Architects has an impressive portfolio of projects, mostly consisting of high-rise developments and the few residential projects that the firm commits to each year. Indonesia Design had the chance to follow the progress of their recently completed private house, from the initial design and construction phases right through to completion and handover to the owners. We talked to Budi Lim about this sumptuous new home.

What made you want to do this house?

I don’t do many residential designs but when I do, I do it wholeheartedly, picturing myself walking in their shoes and creating the living space they would want.

My friendship with this particular client goes back many decades so this was not a normal client-architect assignment and it meant I had a good understanding already about their lifestyle, habits and aims.

We’ve been talking about their dream home since mid-1990s when they lived in an apartment. They wanted a house that is close to their office, with a common area that is widely open and connected to the nature and bright livings spaces, that reflects their personalities.

The family is very hardworking and humble, so I wanted to create a house where they could relax and enjoy the fruits of their labour at the end of a hard day’s work. It took me about two years to finalize the design.

What was the guiding concept for this house?

This house had to be suited to a growing family, considering the young adult children. The concept for a house is like an open book, where each chapter tells its own story. Each floor in this house has been designed as a private apartment for a family member, like pavilions.

The daughter shares the first floor with her parents, but she has a guest bedroom, a private living room, a tatami and a private rooftop garden. The son has the whole second floor to himself, again with an additional guest bedroom and a mezzanine area for the lounge. The concept of togetherness is evident on the ground floor, where the family can gather at any time in the living room and the dining room or in the other open areas like the swimming pool and the gym.

How do you design a healthy house in the middle of the city?

In this age of air conditioning, underfloor cooling systems have been forgotten, but can still be found in numerous heritage buildings around the world. I used an underfloor system in this house to control the ambient temperature inside the rooms. Nevertheless, we still put in some AC units with diffusers to help the chilled air be distributed with less pressure, so that it doesn’t “attack” your body.

All of the rooms receive natural daylight and fresh air from the openings at the front and from the void at the back of the house. There are aquascapes at the sides of the swimming pool that act as water filters as well as being aesthetic features in their own right. Considering all these aspects, I would say that this must be one of the healthiest homes in town.