Setiajasa House
Client: Peter Eu
Project team : Ramesh Seshan, Vivien Wong, Sucy Murniati, Nor Ilani, Jeslyn Ko
Contractor : SP Kean Hua
C&S engineer : Pro Jurutek Sdn Bhd
Photography : Rupajiwa Studio
a 2055sqft end lot link house in medan damansara fully renovated and extended to apprx 3600sqft. A speculative house built for investment purpose (to sell!) but the client's wife loved it so much that the client moved in!
This house was actually the first in a series of houses we started doing that addresses the need for homes to be more flexible and adaptable. Houses and residences last for decades and generations and we believe that they have to evolve and change as the users and their needs evolve and change as well.
Peter, the client, was one of the early clients back in my former office – Unit One Design Sdn Bhd . He had left to Perth some years back and was finally back in KL looking to do up some houses to flip (buy, do up and sell). Unit One Design was too busy at that time and had asked Peter to look me up – that's how we started!
Peter never intended to stay in this house. His original intention was to renovate and flip the house for a healthy profit.– so we did not have a specific brief from a client as we normally had with earlier projects. It was a speculative house. The brief was formulated based on what we thought would be most palatable and accepted by prospective purchasers.
This project started of fairly ordinarily – Peter was a client who wanted to extend and renovate a house to sell for a profit. We had reached the stage where we had sent out the drawings for tender to a few contractors and obtained the prices. Peter wasn't too happy with the cost as it would effect his final profit margin so he made a deal with one of his former contractor contacts and it was decided that the only way for Peter to control and minimize the cost of the construction was for Peter to take the role of the main contractor himself!!
So, on paper it was Peter's contractor contact, SP Kean Hua, who was the builder of the house, but they had their internal understanding on how the payments would work.
It was an interesting site – a long narrow end lot link house, with a lot of land infront of the existing house. I was really into doing link houses and immediately grabbed the chance to do it.
We originally wanted to do another detached block in front of the house with a huge courtyard between the 2 buidings and a cool bridge on the 1st floor linking the 2. But after a round of prelim costings, Peter decided to cut down on the size of the courtyard and also the bridge to reduce cost (as it was an investment project).
There was no overall concept per se, we basically wanted to maximise the potential spatial quality of the site. We didn't want too big a built up but we wanted it to appear a lot larger than it actually is. We also started experimenting with flexible spaces and elements in this house. For example the top floor family room with the loft space above . That family room was designed such that we could add sliding doors or partitions in the future that would act as an additional room.
To cater for the flexibility of these spaces (areas where potential end users would end up rearranging furniture/ etc to their needs), we had imbedded GI trunking into the walls and covered them with slightly taller skirting pieces so powerpoint faceplates could be relocated easily without having to hack any walls (by just adjusting the skirting – you still to bring in a carpenter and electrician but at least the works are dry works and can be controlled)
Peter & I did have a few heated debates on some decisions – to do something really cool and interesting but may only appeal to a select few or to do something safe, that would be more acceptable! In the end, we did end up with some compromises... he allowed me to do a few quirky details and I gave in to some safer solutions!
Since this house was an investment proejct we had to use materials which were fairly inexpensive yet look interesting enough. We had already started experimenting with customised concrete ventblocks built to our specifications for earlier projects and we were going to use them as part of the masterbathroom screen at the first floor, so we had to come out with something else for the carporch.
Brick is an inexpensive material and a lot of younger architects had started using fairface brickwork in their works so we wanted to do something a little differently. I've also always wanted to do brickwork arrangement inspired by Alva Aalto's 1953 Experimental Housein Muuratsalo, Finland.
So we did a quite a few test computer models experimenting with different arrangements, types of bricks (the red clay brick and the grey cement-sand brick) and just for good measure, threw in some of our customised ventblocks as well! After a few rounds and democratic process (we voted for the favourite option in the office!) and Voila! We came out with the final design! The tricky part was the drawings to instruct the contractors how to do it! We had to do drawings that showed how the bricks were arranged layer by layer.
We were actually quite lucky as a couple of indonesian workers belonging to Peter's contractor were actually very good with brickwork! We did a couple of initial mock-ups to test the outcome and proceeded on it quite smoothly!
After that wall, we decided to do another fairface brick wall, a more 3-Dimensional wave pattern for the guest room bathroom facing the internal courtyard. The 1st attempt didn't look so good, and Peter allowed us to tear down the wall and let us try again! We're pretty happy with the end result!
We also went with pre-cast tiled terrazzo flooring as it was fairly inexpensive.
The odd-form concrete at the front of the house framing the bathroom ventblock screen was never intended from the beginning. The contractor had one day asked me if I wanted it to be odd-form concrete and it took me by surprise! - I asked if he could do it and he said yes, so I told him to give a go and show me what he can do. They did it! Not perfect but it was good enough so we decided to do the hood around the side terrace with it as well!
We were also very lucky with the 1st floor flooring works. Peter went hunting for suppliers and he came across one that had white oak parquet going for really cheap.... the problem was, they were all odd sizes as they were leftovers and off cuts. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we had to come out with a random flooring pattern. That turned out pretty cool!