Primordial Delight

There is nothing token about passive cooling in Formwerkz partner Gwen Tan’s terrace house, which enjoys fresh air from end to end and bottom-up.

- Judith Torres

Many folks will say they like the idea of raindrops falling on their face. But not inside the house. A lot of people will also like the idea of an indoor pool in their residence. But not a noisy bunch of wet kids trooping to the master bath to shower after a swim. And almost everyone will profess a desire for cooling breezes in their home. But not if it spells exposure to the dreaded Indonesian haze—an air pollution problem Singapore suffers when smoke blows in from forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

“We had to decide how we wanted to live as a family,” says architect Gwen Tan, who designed the house. “We enjoy plants and nature. Berlin and I decided we would not survive happily in a closed environment.” And so the Open House is open, with only grills, slats, and a motorized sunscreen (that still lets in the sun) to shelter the second and third levels of the front façade, and sliding windows and doors on every level at the back façade.

The lot is narrow and long—6 by 35 meters. Tan and her husband, Berlin Lee, both architects and partners at the Singapore firm, Formwerkz, were looking for bigger units, but they fell in love with this particular row of terrace houses because the back looks out to a field of mature shade trees. Tan explains further: “Usually, in the landed housing scene here, the back of your house stares at the back of another house. It’s rare to have this kind of breathing space.”