Winged House
2012 | Singapore | Residential
A sui generis expression of a vernacular.
Created site-specific to its sloped, triangular land, the Winged House is a unique arrangement of two trapezoidal volumes—two wings aligned along the property boundaries, set on site in a splay to embrace a central garden and a trio of prized native palms.
Living spaces, bedded into the slope of the land, are defined by relationships to their inclined, teak-ceiled roofs. Eaves are exaggerated into overhangs—these generous canopies enable a remarkable openness to the garden whose thickets indeed feed on the high sun and downpours the roofs were raised, in first place, as shelter from.
The roof design draws on precedents seen in Malay houses, but are here modulated in being raised from the rest of the house, split, pulled apart and re-pitched so one is lifted over the other, creating a slot opening to admit air and light—the tropical intensity of the latter tempered by the honeyed tones of Burmese teak into a quality of radiance.
Thus arising from the logic of terrain and climate, the house comes to its origami silhouette—not so much a departure from the regional vernacular as a very sui generis reassertion of it.
