Soaring Marble Walls

The design of this penthouse apartment was guided by one main concept. LYNN TAN finds out how the whole scheme came together to reinforce this central idea.

- Lynn Tan

WHO LIVES HERE

A couple with two teenage children

HOME A four-bedroom penthouse apartment in Sembawang

SIZE 2,300 sq ft

When business owners John and Janet purchased the old penthouse apartment, they recognised the need for a major overhaul and trawled the Internet for a credible designer who could live up to the task. Lim Ai Tiong (LATO) Architects/ Design’s portfolio caught their attention.

“It was reassuring that Ai Tiong is an architect, so he would be able to handle a project involving lofts and double volumes,” says the couple, whose brief called for three bedrooms – a master for them and a bedroom each for their teenage son and daughter.

They also needed a proper area for working from home days. And, more importantly, they wanted Ai Tiong to make sense of the existing layout while looking into how to better express the double-volume spaces within the two-story unit.

For Ai Tiong, reconfiguring the layout took precedence. “With the right function in the right location, the aesthetics will fall right into place,” he firmly believes. The homeowners originally planned to have the master bedroom-cum-study and their daughter’s bedroom on the first storey, and the living room and their son’s bedroom upstairs.