Visage Of Calm

A veil of bamboo cloaks this semi-detached house by wallflower architecture + design serving as a multifunctional skin.

- Low Shi Ping

On paper, this project looked like a challenging one: A semi-detached house sitting on a bend in the street with a triangular plot and narrow frontage.

Fortunately, with the award-winning, 21-year-old Wallflower Architecture + Design working on it, together with a simple brief from the owners, the end-result that is Bamboo Veil House turned out to be quite extraordinary.

Immediately obvious is a screen made up of vertical pieces of bamboo that wraps around the second floor.

Wallflower’s co-founder Robin Tan likens it to a veil “wrapping around the building in a single continuous ‘cloth’”.

BREATHABLE SKIN

Yet, this striking feature is so much more – deftly balancing that important form and function equation that every home should have.

“As a unifying element, the bamboo screen flows around the rounded edges of the façade, creating a soft and organic layer sandwiched between the defined white eaves,” explains Tan.

“The rounded edges of the façade respond to the street bend, such that when one approaches from it, one is greeted by a bamboo veil that shields its occupants from prying eyes.

“The natural colour of the bamboo against the white backdrop further accentuates the dominance of the veil.”

Come nightfall, lights from inside the house spill out from between the bamboo, evoking the effect of a delicate lantern.