Good Class Bungalow at Andrew Road, SIngapore

As is the case in many countries, Singapore’s residential architecture can no longer rely on idyllic sites and spectacular views to inform its spaces. The scarcity of land for private houses has led to a reality of less-than-perfect plots. Although surrounded by heavy greenery along the perimeter of one of the nation’s mature nature reserves, this house is also situated at a major vehicular intersection along a busy and noisy highway. A D Lab addressed this quandary by lowering the public facilities around a sunken garden that focuses the views inward. From this private oasis, angled views of the reservoir’s treetops create context while the noise of the highway is largely muffled. The ground form is conceptually lifted and peeled upward to channel wind and light into the central garden where a swimming pool helps to cool down the space from the intense tropical sun.

From the urban context, the design gives back to the street the landscape lost as a result of the development. A D Lab kept the built form low and ground-hugging by making the undulating turf-covered roof appear as a continuation of the landform. Understated from the outside, the internal spatial expression of this peeled-up roof creates the sensation of an enlarging and grand internal room that simultaneously leads the eyes upward to the sky as well as downward to the intimate central gardens below.

Project Description

AraGreens Residences is a 700-unit multi-generational residential development planned in 7.5 acres of land in Ara Damansara, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. Inspired by bio-mimicry, the architectural and landscape features are immaculately designed from ground up, with 6 blocks of 16 storey service apartments over 3 storeys of basement car parks with landscape features emerging organically from the environmental deck like a rhizomatic growth. The distinctive triangular building forms were generated as a natural response to site after synthesizing the multitude of considerations from programmatic and site optimization requirements, sight lines and view maximization, sun shading and aerodynamics for wind permeability.

Rhizomatic Architectural Concept - Family entities as cellular units may split and combine depending on family needs, aggregating into clusters and cumulating into tower communities.

Age Proof Living - AraGreens Residences is designed to be barrier free and accessible with amenities that cater to all ages.

Dual Key Design for multi-generational living - ‘Dual Key’ units are designed for families to stay together ‘under on roof’ with the parents without compromising on privacy, providing an avenue for multi generation families to live together yet apart.

Original Innovative Design - Addressing the rhombic site, the architects have opted for triangular layout to maximize distant views. This reduces direct unit-to-unit frontage, and creates wider frontages and distant views for all residential units.

Pedestrian Friendly Car-Free Landscape ground deck - Vehicular circulation is restricted to entrance drop-off and basement levels, freeing up extensive space on environmental deck for wholesome family recreation

Environmentally sustainable and Climatic Responsive Architecture Layout - AraGreens Residences is designed to be environmentally sustainable and climatic responsive attaining greenmark gold plus award.

Cambio lofts consist of 2 nos of 35 storey residential towers with a commercial podium and lush roof top environmental decks with common facilities on the podium roof tops. Located in Alam Sutera, Jakarta, Indonesia, the development with 1400 unique apartment units is designed to be adaptive giving the occupants the option to configure their apartments for their particular needs.

A configuration of the structure as a steel and concreate matrix that supports a vertical community of private houses, clustered into distinct village-like communities with vertical communal sky gardens and amenities distributed distributed evenly through the 35 floors offering residents a unique opportunity to achieve an individual statement of identity and distinct communities in a high rise. .

It offers a critique of the twentieth Century tradition of homogenised and faceless multi-storey buildings that denies urban dwellers of their presence in the cityscape.

Ibis Styles Hotel Macpherson- Giving new life to a forgotten building.

Built in the 1970s, the former Windsor Hotel underwent its fair share of changes and renovations that did little to engage its surroundings and the community. Located at the prominent intersection of MacPherson and Aljunied Roads, the hotel anchors the MacPherson Industrial Estate and landed residential estate. The existing 3-storey introverted and opaque shopping podium was unfriendly to its neighbours. Above this podium was a 6 storey 200-key hotel, with an inefficient H-shaped plan on a 7.2m grid with 2 room bays per grid. We were presented with the extremely challenging task of making this property relevant, with a fresh lease on life. For the project to be economically viable for international operators, the hotel had to be reconfigured to increase the room count to 300 keys.

Rebuilding was an obvious option, but an A&A to the existing building was an overall leaner solution with a shorter execution period. However, that meant that the increase in the hotel rooms had to be done within the same foot print with the constraints of the existing structure, since the 3-storey podium floor areas needed to be fully used for strata shops. This resulted in a very narrow room bay of 2.8m which was incompatible to the structural grid, creating many different small room layouts and situations where existing columns appear in the rooms. We overcame this challenge by making the hotel guest rooms open plan and with a system of multi-functional modular furniture adaptable to all 28 room configurations.

The new ground level frontage is more welcoming and accessible to the pubic with a large entrance, F&B spaces and more porous pedestrian connections to the external walkways. The façade was designed as a porous veil stretched over the existing building. Openings were cut out for views and entrances as well as a large opening on the 4th level to frame the lush pool garden terrace.

Addition and Alteration to Existing Semi Detach House

A quiet and unassuming gesture to the street with a respect of the humble scale of the adjacent series of semi detached houses along Telok Kurau describes the entrance to this reconstruction project by ADlab in Singapore. With only a second glance, one might notice the subtle moiré pattern beginning to emerge on the brick work of the front facade that would introduce the main design intention of the house and define its relationship with the surrounding land and context. In this project, the architects were careful not to waste what was already on the site. “To tear down a perfectly strong and healthy existing structure and then built a new structure just because the old structural elements are perhaps not conveniently located or seemingly too difficult to retain, is not a very sustainable way of looking at redevelopment”. In the case of Chain Mail House, we retained the structure of the existing semi detached building on the site.

As is often the case with semi detached houses in Singapore, the long open side of the house faces the long side of the neighbour’s property, creating an “overlooking” problem. Here, the architect’s resolution to this problem was to look back at a basic element of architecture - the brick. The entire side of the existing structure of the Telok Kurau building was wrapped by the designers in a new organic skin made of brick that stretches open in areas to let light and ventilation through and closes where privacy is required. The resulting language is a timeless rethinking of a traditional material. The site is a very deep and relatively narrow plot of land that faces on its longest side an existing towering 4 storey building that is built up to the maximum setback. Because of the extended depth of the site, the architects chose to perform some minor surgery on the existing structure by breaking it open in its center to allow an internal atrium to unify the building vertically. This atrium also introduces light and long diagonal views up through from the Living and Dining Rooms on the first floor to the master bedroom and family room on the 2nd floor and further up to the master study and music room in the attic. Along the entire ground floor, a band of full heights glass windows links the series of spaces together with a constant relationship to the narrow strip of garden at the side. Since the garden on the ground floor could be made to be quite private with the clever use of planting and fencing, the rooms open up as much as possible to the external to allow the maximum amount of light to enter the long spaces. The first space encountered once through the front doors is a highly intimate living room-come-lounge area that is stepped down into like a cosy niche, edged with built-in strips of sofa style seating and rich and sensual materials such as heavily grained timber and soft fabrics. The space then transition to a more open lounge where the views are brought from the low level views of the niche seating corner to a more grand upward diagonal view into the lofty atrium above. A lightweight open tread staircase leads from this space to the upper realms of the house and helps to accentuate the impression of lightness and spatial openness of this room. Moving further to the rear of the deep site, the space then introverts once more in a more intimate Dining Room. Here, the architects cleverly used the heavy columns of the existing house to create one side of a series of portals that frame the room and give it a slightly more formal character.

From the second floor onward, the effect of the elegant brick patterns can be experienced. The large expanses of patterned brick walls that open in gradual organic sequences are separated from the external spaces with sheets of sliding glass that can be moved aside to be directly felt within the rooms or closed to air condition the space when needed. Although this long expanse of wall faces a hostile neighbour, the mediating factor of the brick screen allows the feeling of being directly connected to nature in how it opens up to experience the landscape while closing itself off to unpleasant portions of the views and to the harsh direct sunlight. Beautiful and hypnotic reflected patterns of light from the brick screen fall lightly on the floors and surrounding walls, giving the spaces an almost cathedral-like quality and an ambiguous semi outdoor character.

lightweight, fast assembly, pre-fabricated, pre-finished volumetric building system

Multi-discipline Collaboration with INplex

the 2 storey modular unit took 11 days to fabricate in the factory

Weighs only 2.5 tons, 9 times less than a concrete and brick structure.

it is transported, assembled and fully erected on site in 4 days.

based on modular components, the monomer building system is able to customize buildings to any configuration, shape or form.

fabrication in a factory environment allows the build quality to be much better , reducing waste and optimizing resources.

by virtue of its light weight, the factory produced modules can be easily transported and deployed anywhere.

Situated at a corner junction in a lushly planted residential neighbourhood in Singapore, the Spiral house, although featuring prominently on the street due to its location, is surrounded by mature rain trees and encircled by quiet sidewalks. The architects at AD Lab Pte Ltd were driven by the idea that the building should be a gentle continuation of its surroundings. They aspired to echo and even amplify the beauty and tranquillity of the site with the new building, despite having to displace much of the existing ground level garden in the process. This ambition to extend the spirit of the site, its sense of garden, gentle movement and tranquillity, posed a challenge to the designers given the extensive programmatic requirement of the owners, who live as a large multi-generational family on the site.

The architects were able to fulfil the ambitious accommodation needs of the owners by creating a highly compact building form with a small courtyard to bring light and air into its centre. In order to replace the displaced garden, they designed a large garden veranda that wraps in a spiralling motion around and up the external facade of the house. This veranda is planted with greenery and visually continues onto the main roof with a green lawn that wraps over the roof forms. This architectural language of encircling green landscape around the building resonates with the quiet planted road verge and sidewalks that wrap around the site.

Aside from gently merging the building into the site, these long winding verandas also serve as extensions of the individual rooms and link the various spaces of the house, creating a sense of connectivity where the owners are have a comfortable garden space where they can all meet and come together as a family.

light weight modular construction

ADLab’s architectural designs are linked to one another not by a common architectural expression, but through a process that allow a multiplicity of factors to inform the design. This approach sees architecture as a manifestation of that profound search for unity between the arts, technology , engineering, science, geography, economics and psychology . It is an attempt to fully embrace the “particular” from the complexities of multiple actants in each architectural project to allow their uniqueness and the “new-ness” to emerge. The making of such architecture demands an intensive search for convergence from these multiple actants affecting and shaping its design, conceiving a highly integrated solution that is immanent. We believe it is through this non-reductive approach, architecture drives innovation, allows emergence of the new, and becomes true poetry.

clustered housing commune with passive environmental design strategy

Charlton 27 is a 27-unit cluster terrace project in the heart of the tropical city-state. The architects experimented with the design of the units as well as their relationship with the outdoors to achieve a feeling of bright spatial openness and environmental comfort within the typically dense typology of privately owned terrace houses with communal facilities. In Charlton 27, the spatial design concept is to open up the interiors of the units by splitting the upper floor levels of the houses and to create a central atrium that allows air and light to flow through the buildings both horizontally and vertically. Above this central atrium are two louvred wind scoops at the roof level, one facing each of the prevailing wind directions, that draw air into the central atrium as well as allow warm air to escape.

All of the bedrooms and living spaces that surround the central atrium at each level bring in light and air into the rooms through the external windows as well as have openings into the central atrium, providing cross ventilation into every main living space of the house and contributing to the Greenmark Gold certification of the development. The center of the terrace house is here a bright and airy space that gives a feeling of permeability and openness as well as allows the inhabitants to see diagonally through the house and beyond to the lushly landscaped external. Lightweight screens on the external facades mediate the harshness of the direct tropical sun. These screens are angled to increase privacy from on-looking houses while maximizing the views to the 50m swimming pool and richly planted external environment.

With this reconstruction project on Lorong Kemunchup, we were faced with an extremely challenging site with very exciting possibilities. An existing conservative semi detached house sat inconspicuously at the street frontage of the site. Lurking behind this house, however, was a 100m long narrow strip of land that belongs to the property and tapers gradually toward the back in a boomerang shape. Apart from being extremely long and narrow, this strip of land, which reaches around the base of a surrounding hill in a heavily forested area, slopes approximately 6-7 meters from the back to the front of the strip. Because this long strip was thought to be an unbuildable area, much of the site was left unoccupied and neglected. Out of the 10,000.00 ft2 of the site, the existing semi detached house only covered approximately 30% of its area. We saw that this neglected strip of land, despite its treacherous terrain, was the most beautiful portion of the site and we challenged ourselves to build upon it.

As a way of reducing waste on the project and of saving cost, we decided to retain the entire 2 storey plus attic semi detached house with minimal refinishing work to be done. We concentrated the efforts of the project at the back of the site. Firstly, an existing single storey extension at the back of the semi detached house was demolished and the ground beams and slab were re-used for the new single storey living room. A second terracing two storey structure was added at the back of the site and separated from the Living Room with a swimming pool and covered walkway and terraces that wrap around it. Due to the fact that the structure is terracing to follow the sloping of the ground form, several roof terraces were created for the inhabitants to enjoy the fantastic surrounding scenery. The new structure was kept low and ground-hugging in order to keep it light and minimize the foundation work. In another effort to minimize material, we used the 5th elevation of the house, the roof form, as the main façade of the extension. We bent and folded this form around the top and the sides of the house. This roof was conceived as an evolution of the traditional sloping gable tropical roof and retained the idea of the visual and functional importance of the roof in the tropics. Aesthetically, this undulating roof form also echoes the language of the surrounding hills and organically wraps and manipulates itself around the sloping, twisting site.

Having constructed their house themselves over 25 years prior, the clients were somewhat reluctant to tear down the unassuming bungalow that had been a repository for so many memories throughout the years of raising their family. In order to make their plot of land sustainable for the next phase of their lives, however, they decided to replace the existing house with two semi detached houses where their eldest son and his family could be next to them as well as a separate apartment for their youngest son. The designers were sensitive to the emotional bond the clients had to their Holland Grove home and proposed a design that echoed both in form and spatial relationship the existing bungalow in order to facilitate the transference of experience and collective memory from the old to the new houses. After discussions with the owners, the architects found that many of the associations they had to the existing house were related to its double pitched roof form, as well as to its bright and open spaces that gave the feeling that the house was sitting in the gardens. With the new design, the architects retained the concept of the original roof form with one pitch at the front and one pitch along the side of the development. These pitches were then related to the entrance of the parent’s house at the front left side of the lot, and the side pitch defined the son’s house along the right side of the property.

The proportion of the overall development is elongated in the new design and the designers used a pronounced expression of the architectural element of the line of the pitch and roof eave and stretched it across the frontage of both houses in order for the two semi detached houses to read as one large home with two distinct sides. This strong linear expression visually ties the houses together yet allows them have their individual architectural expression. In an effort to surround the houses with gardens as well as to assist with cross ventilation and light into the depth of each house, A D Lab designed a central courtyard and water feature that wraps itself between the two semi detached houses. The designers saw that it was critical to the family’s communication to create openings in the parti wall that typically separates two semi detached houses. They received permission to allow voids in the wall in significant locations where there could be visual connectivity between the main spaces of the houses, while maintaining privacy in others. The permeability of the central courtyard between the two units and their parti walls as well as the cutting out of several other courtyards throughout both houses allows for the strong relationship of the houses with the gardens, the environment, as well as between the two houses.

Cluster of 4 units of terrace houses

Design concept –

• Design and language concept of building is of stacking pavilions that are independent and often pulled away from the party walls, leaving spaces around the pavilions so that the rooms do not feel connected to the party walls. Gardens and terrace spaces surround the rooms to give feeling of spaciousness while in the room and less awareness of the neighbour. Avoiding feeling that you are sandwiched between 2 party walls so that the sensation of space is expanded. Each pavilion is 1 room… increase feeling of privacy and commune with nature

• Compressing the building footprint and placing the pool on the roof in order to maximize the garden below. Because it is a terrace house, the front entrance is mostly taken up by the driveway so we increased the back garden so that the internal 1st storey spaces look backward to a sizeable and green garden

• Services placed in half basement facing the front of the site so that the dining room is raised above and full back garden can be used as garden and not yard

• Dining rm is raised higher than living so that the view from dining looks down to the living and beyond, into the garden behind, and the view from living looks upward through the dining and outward toward the sky (so as to not focus on the carporch)… crossventilation

• Fantastic view from roof level. Swimming pool with glass end maximizes the view