House at Damansara Kuala Lumpur RT and Q Architects

“This house was a labour of love. It started as a passion and ended as a passion.” Rene Tan It is really the story of two houses. The client already owned a house on the adjacent block, an exquisite modern reinterpretation of the tropical house by Soo K.Chan from SCDA. After acquiring the neighbouring property and demolishing the existing house, he asked Rene Tan to design a ‘biggish-looking small house’ in its place that would complement the Soo Chan house, duplicating the spaces in the original house but at a scale which would accommodate expanded entertainment. Having lived in a rather tropical house,the client now wanted to live in ‘something more modern’ but with as much garden area as possible.

The dramatic double-height music/sitting room sits at the end of the elegant galleria leading from the house entry.

Rene Tan’s solution is what he calls ‘a modern rendition of a tropical, naturally ventilated house’. The challenge was to make the new house different but still relate it to the existing house, especially as there is a one level difference between the two sites. The old house is now aligned with the basement of the new house, with the two houses back to back.

Interestingly, the difference in level seems to connect the two houses rather than separate them. Although the new house was seen initially as an ‘annex’ to the old one, it is now the old house which seems like the annex—a kind of gracious, quiet refuge whose low light levels are a meditative contrast to the light-drenched new house. With Rene Tan—atrained musician—it is always apposite to use musical metaphors. One could say that the old house is like a gentle, introspective slow movement which follows a grand and extroverted opening movement.

But in subtle ways the two houses have a close affinity. The elegant, free-flowing plan of the original house with its ‘verandah rooms’ is paralleled in the new house, but with an infusion of natural light and the presence of the awe-inspiring double-height living space with an entire wall of Carrara marble. ‘This’, says Tan, ‘is the big event of the house’— the finale of the symphony—which opens up both to the south and to the north where it overlooks the original house. Double-height sliding glass doors on either side maximize cross-ventilation, while deep overhangs optimize sun protection.

Apart from the ‘big event’, the new house has its own special intimacy to reflect that of the original house. The house is L-shaped with the core forming the long leg and the living space the short leg. The core consists of a long circulation spine expressed through two commanding parallel, double-height walls. Public spaces, which include a powder room-cum- swimming pool changing room and a dry kitchen and dining space opening on to the 20-metre swimming pool, are on the ground floor level, along with the bedrooms of the client’s two sons. The master bedroom is on the upper level.

With the new house, the architects—the design team included T. K. Quek and Tan Shen Ru in addition to Rene Tan—set out to create a more abstract form of ‘tropical modern’. The aim was to incorporate the sun protection and natural ventilation strategies of the traditional tropical house, but to otherwise embody the spirit of the tropical house rather than imitate its outward form.

The twin blade walls help define the carport and entry.

This view down into the music/sitting room is from a small ‘Juliet’ balcony.

The house is mainly made of fair-faced concrete, white plaster and paint. But the use of dark-toned framing, dark timber-battened screens and black granite and walnut timber floors creates an affinity of palette with the old house.

This projection clearly shows the organization of the house and how the twin blade walls act like a fault line between the two pavilions.

A box frame extrudes from the music/sitting room to provide protection from the sun.

The circulation spine is a kind of gallery enclosed on both levels on the garden side by a wall of dark-timbered pivoting louvred panels. Yes, it does let the rain in, but as Tan says, ‘In the tropics, you have to put up with certain inconveniences. This is not’, he goes on, ‘an air-conditioned house.’

The house balances entertainment areas with relatively modest domestic amenities—just three bedrooms. The master bedroom suite is, however, quite grand in conception, with oak veneer wall linings and a huge glass-walled walk-in wardrobe. The big feature of the bathroom is the free-standing bath in the middle of the room set within its own open pavilion, which Tan describes as ‘a building within a building’.

The total land area is 10,000 square feet with a built-up area of 7,000 square feet. That means quite a lot of space has been retained as garden. Given that the brief was for a ‘biggish-looking small house’, the house needed to have ‘an attitude’, says Tan. But the brief also called for a large garden area. To maximize the garden, the architects kept it flat but lifted it a little to ‘give it presence’. Instead of five little gardens, says Tan, they designed one big one. On the eastern side, this is basically an expanse of lawn leading down to the living pavilion. On the western side, the garden is more intimate, accommodating a 20-metre swimming pool continually refreshed by fountains and a waterfall and framed on the other side of the lawn by a 20-metre-long black granite wall with water coursing down its textured surface.

The galleria leads from the entry and acts a spine for a series of entertainment rooms and bedrooms, all facing on to the pool.

Ground floor plan.

The view from the galleria into an entertainment room with its own dry kitchen and bar.

Reconciling privacy with connection to the outside, marrying one way of life (in the original house) with another (in the new house), and maximizing access to natural light and natural ventilation make this house sustainable in more than one sense of the word.

Looking from the entertainment room to the pool.

The side garden is a series of planes—deck, pool, lawn and black granite water wall.

A wilderness of mirrors reveals the opulent ‘bath house’ and bathroom off the master bedroom.

The bathrooms and powder rooms express a luxury which is only hinted at in the more restrained public areas of the house.

The master bedroom’s interior timber finishes complement the dark-stained louvre doors that form a ‘verandah room’ and allow natural ventilation without compromising privacy.

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