building a green home

This semi-detached house by Zivy Architects explores passive tropical design the delight in architecture and the issues of multi-generational living.

- Luo Jingmei

The discussion on sustainable architecture is well fuelled by the advancement in technology. But the essentials of good buildings remain simple, albeit overlooked at times – well-thought out details, functioning spaces, climatic suitability and delight. Vitruvius’ dictates of ‘firmitas, utilitas and venustas’ (strength, utility and beauty) serve as a good guide.

In House of a Thousand Leaves by Zivy Architects, these are found to be present. The owners are an elderly couple that built the house hoping that their grown children will move in after marriage. At three-and-a-half storeys, the rebuild rises taller than its neighbours. But it maintains a light demeanour due to a concrete screen that divides the main spaces from the party wall at one side; it stretches up the full height of the front elevation, continues at the roof as a skylight before folding downwards at the rear as another screen, mimicking the front façade.

In this way, the narrow and long plot that measures 9 by 38 metres received plentiful light inside. Airflow through the north-south layout is also good, and the uninterrupted vertical volume beneath the skylight mitigates the plot’s narrowness. The staircase rising up the atrium deploys perforated stainless steel treads to enhance light and airflow. On the first storey, a planter runs the length of the house. One walks on stone pavers, their gaps filled with pebblewash along this corridor that blurs perception of the indoors and outdoors.

back to nature