Cairnhill Shophouse Singapore, Richard Ho Architects

The living area is part of one continuous space culminating in the dry kitchen and breakfast bar.

Garage and entry gate.

The house is elevated above the road, allowing for a garage whose roof has been transformed into a terrace garden.

The house entry with the original casement windows now enlarged as French windows on to the terrace.

‘The client specifically asked for a contemporary feel to the house. I believe we managed his expectations rather well. This house has all the trappings of modern comfort, yet it is unmistakably a shophouse which celebrates its heritage.’—Richard Ho

Richard Ho has a well-earned reputation for his sensitive but innovative work with conservation houses in Singapore and Malaysia. This reflects his strong commitment to cultural continuity. For Ho, this commitment is not some sentimental attachment to the past, but a vision of how the past can be constantly refreshed to inform a contemporary way of life.

This is a form of cultural sustainability. In finding new uses for existing buildings, Ho is also contributing to environmental sustainability by minimizing waste and by employing climate control strategies to reduce energy consumption.

Ho’s philosophy of a ‘living past’ is perfectly illustrated by his make- over of this pre-war terrace house on Cairnhill Road, just a short walk from bustling Orchard Road. The aim was to create a functional, contemporary family home while celebrating the house’s history and character.

The façade was retained and restored, as were the internal party walls. A third level was added, but the necessary additional load-bearing columns and beams have been ingeniously disguised while attention is subtly drawn to the party walls and the airwell which are features of the shophouse/ terrace house. The original timber ceilings and flooring, along with the exposed beams, have also been retained, along with the tiling on the entry level terrace where the original casement windows have been elegantly enlarged to form French windows connecting the living area with the terrace.

The central atrium rises above the koi pond, with the floating staircase helping to maintain a sense of light and space.

The living/dining area extends to the breakfast room across a timber bridge.

The interior of the traditional shophouse can be dark, somewhat claustrophobic and spatially not suited to a contemporary lifestyle. Ho thus opened up the first floor into a single flowing space organized around the airwell. However, the original plan is very subtly retained. The living and dining areas form a single space, but the airwell now has a koi pond at its base, spanned by a timber bridge connecting with an eat-in dry kitchen and the wet kitchen, laundry and maid’s quarters at the back.

With a timber-treaded stairway winding its way to the two upper levels, the airwell, described by Ho as the ‘fulcrum of the house’, becomes an atrium. No longer permanently open to the sky, the airwell has a retractable glass roof and operable blinds. Hence, it can be either open or closed depending on the weather, while the blinds reflect 75 per cent of the sun’s heat back out. The climate control role of the traditional airwell has now been enhanced to be a source of natural light, a generator of natural ventilation and a means of heat control.

The airwell strategy, with its glass balustraded staircase, also creates a great sense of connectivity and transparency and the feeling that the house is unfolding vertically. As a result, the house has been opened up both in plan and verticality, eliminating the closed-in mood of the original shophouse.

In the Cairnhill Shophouse, Ho once again explores the Wrightian strategy of refuge and prospect. On the one hand, this is the perfect house for a young urban family because it is close to all the activity of the city. But once inside, it provides a sense of refuge from all the hustle and bustle outside. Inside, however, it offers expansive internal prospect. The stairway creates two ‘wings’ to the house—one, on the street side, a children’s wing, the other, on the hill side, for parents and guests— visually connected across the airwell and through the glazed stairway balustrade.

First and second storey plans.

The breakfast bar and dry kitchen extend to the wet kitchen, laundry and maid’s quarters.

The master bathroom connects directly to the master bedroom.

By switching the stairway across a landing, the stairway becomes the ‘fulcrum’ of the house, leading the eye ever upwards.

The house backs on to a wooded hill, which not only provides privacy but the feeling that one is in the countryside, not in the middle of the Singapore CBD. Ho has ‘borrowed’ this landscape to achieve external prospect, in other words, a sense of connection with the natural world and an antidote to the feeling of enclosure that inevitably comes with a terrace house.

In the master bedroom, for example, customized joinery acts as a room divider and a bedhead, allowing the occupants to enjoy views through the bathroom to the landscape beyond, framed by a floor-to- ceiling window. Effectively, one is sleeping in the landscape, but without any loss of privacy. Then, on the top floor, Ho has created a timber- decked roof terrace with a plunge pool. The blade walls guarantee privacy as well as frame the landscape of the hill.

While this house offers refuge and prospect, it also offers privacy and community by providing communal spaces that are clearly separated from the private spaces, which include not just the children’s wing but a beautifully appointed guest suite on the third storey reminiscent of a European roof space atelier.