CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION SUSTAINABLE LUXURY: IS IT A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?
TANGLIN HILL HOUSE (ECO:ID ARCHITECTS)
NEIL ROAD SHOPHOUSE (EXPERIENCE DESIGN STUDIO, ONG&ONG)
MANDAI COURTYARD HOUSE (ATELIER M+A)
NAMLY DRIVE HOUSE (CHANG ARCHITECTS)
OLIV APARTMENTS (W ARCHITECTS)
SEMBAWANG LONG HOUSES (FORMWERKZ)
THE CORAL HOUSE (GUZ ARCHITECTS)
WATER LILY HOUSE (GUZ ARCHITECTS)
CHATSWORTH PARK HOUSE (ECO:ID ARCHITECTS)
THOMSON HEIGHTS HOUSE (AAMER ARCHITECTS)
JALAN MAT JAMBOL HOUSE (ZARCH COLLABORATIVES)
INTERLOCKING HOUSE (LATO DESIGN)
TRAVERTINE DREAM HOUSE (WALLFLOWER ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN)
DAKOTA APARTMENT (JONATHAN POH)
BAMBOO CURTAIN HOUSE (ECO:ID ARCHITECTS)
SUNSET PLACE HOUSE (IP:LI ARCHITECTS)
WATTEN RESIDENCES (IP:LI ARCHITECTS)
THE GREEN COLLECTION (RT+Q ARCHITECTS)
VERANDAH HOUSE (RT+Q ARCHITECTS)
THE CRANES (EXPERIENCE DESIGN STUDIO, ONG&ONG)
CAIRNHILL ROAD SHOPHOUSE (RICHARDHO ARCHITECTS)
The Mandai Courtyard House is a serenely simple contemporary home. Jalan Mat Jambol is a house without windows. This Neil Road shophouse has been lovingly restored by a very modern couple. The Namly House enjoys its own interior tropical garden. This house by R+Q reveals its full tropical elegance after an extended arrival sequence. The Bamboo Curtain House uses a mix of traditional and natural elements to make a contemporary home. Looking down into the courtyard living/dining space of the Barnstorm House. Two historic trees form part of the landscape at the Belmont Road House.
SUSTAINABLE LUXURY: IS IT A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?
This book presents some of the very best and most luxurious new homes in Singapore. Each of them, in one way or another, represents a response to the challenges of creating luxurious yet sustainable homes in one of the world’s most expensive cities—and in a sweltering tropical climate!
You may assume that luxury is inherently self-indulgent and, therefore, non-sustainable. But is it? The architects of these homes, together with their clients, demonstrate that this is emphatically not the case. This book reveals the many innovative solutions they found in doing so, illustrating in the process how Singapore has become an incubator of innovative residential design.
Crucially, each home achieves its own special kind of luxury through the creativity and imagination of its designers working in close collaboration with their clients. As architect Mark Wee, puts it, ‘Designing a house for a client is, for them, a highly emotional thing … it is not just money invested, it is meant to be a setting for them to live for a long time.’ In fact, with most of the homes in this book, the marriage of luxury and sustainability has been achieved not by spending huge sums of money but by the application of some simple, imaginative and well thought out strategies.
Most of these homes are free-standing landed properties. In the tiny island state of Singapore, this means, by definition, that a lot of money is spent to acquire the land even before the design process begins. Money, though, is forever the elephant in the architectural room. Despite the many lessons learned from traditional architecture about how to live in a tropical climate, money has always provided the resource—as everywhere else in the world— that has enabled architecture to experiment, explore and innovate. Over time, the lessons learned from these ‘luxurious’