Tropical House With A Bamboo Veil Wrapped Around Its Middle Section
The Bamboo Veil House is located in Singapore and occupies a small, triangular plot. Its owner kept it in its original condition with minimal interventions being done over the years up until 2019 when the house got a complete makeover. It was studio Wallflower Architecture + Design who came up with the new design based on their clients requirements and ideas. The initial brief was quite simple. This was to be a minimal tropical house with a large social space on the ground floor. There was however one specific detail which made this project unlike any other.
The owner fell in love with the design of the Nezu Museum when they visited Tokyo and wanted to incorporate that aesthetic into their new home. That’s where the inspiration for the bamboo screen came from. It’s like a veil which wraps around the building in a single continuous sheet, like a set of house shutters that perfectly blend into the facade when closed.
This unique aesthetic suits this semi-detached house perfectly considering the dense urban environment that it’s a part of as well as the tropical climate. In order to give the house a modern allure both inside and out, the architects designed the facade as a double skin. The bamboo veil is the outer layer and a series of aluminum-framed glass windows form the inner skin.
The bamboo veil is a unifying element that gives the house a unique identity and separates it from the neighboring structures but also helps it blend into the local landscape. From a structural point of view, the division of spaces internally is quite simple. The open space kitchen, dining and entertainment spaces occupy the ground floor with the bedroom being nestled on the second floor behind the bamboo screens and an additional study and a family room being placed on the top floor.