Brick and Mortar Make a Comeback in This Corner House
The woes of being on a four-lane main road and the heat from the afternoon sun were addressed with good old brick
All photos courtesy of Archifest / Timur Designs
Their out-of-the-box answer was literally inward looking. Shutting out the noise was as simple as closing the front and side of the house with a wraparound brick wall. This barricade also blocked out light which was compensated by opening up the other side of the house (where the party wall is) to a void where light can spill into. This was achieved by giving up 1.5 metres of the width to the void.
This loss of space isn’t something most homeowners accept willingly but Chan’s client saw the wisdom and benefit in his design.
Their out-of-the-box answer was literally inward looking. Shutting out the noise was as simple as closing the front and side of the house with a wraparound brick wall. This barricade also blocked out light which was compensated by opening up the other side of the house (where the party wall is) to a void where light can spill into. This was achieved by giving up 1.5 metres of the width to the void.
This loss of space isn’t something most homeowners accept willingly but Chan’s client saw the wisdom and benefit in his design.
The inside-out concept also extends to the use of fair-faced brick as an integral part of the facade and interior.
“[A layer of] brick is not load-bearing and in construction, brickwork has to be clad in concrete structures or infilled,” says Chan. “Here, we are turning bricks into ‘brick tiles’, wrapping beams and even turning corners.”
A scarcity of skilled bricklayers meant Chan and the team had to be on-hand to oversee the brickwork closely. Being so involved gave them the opportunity to play with assembly, giving rise to the playful textures on the void walls.
“Think of the building made up of millions of pixels or bricks. As these bricks were not load-bearing, we could pull out bricks or push them in and out to create textures,” the architect explains.
“[A layer of] brick is not load-bearing and in construction, brickwork has to be clad in concrete structures or infilled,” says Chan. “Here, we are turning bricks into ‘brick tiles’, wrapping beams and even turning corners.”
A scarcity of skilled bricklayers meant Chan and the team had to be on-hand to oversee the brickwork closely. Being so involved gave them the opportunity to play with assembly, giving rise to the playful textures on the void walls.
“Think of the building made up of millions of pixels or bricks. As these bricks were not load-bearing, we could pull out bricks or push them in and out to create textures,” the architect explains.
“The use of natural burnt-brown facing bricks as the façade material further enhances the ‘closed’ look, in direct contrast to the windows opening onto the air-well voids which are often full-height from floor to ceiling,” says Chan.
Every bedroom features floor-to-ceiling windows, a luxury that is possible as they open up to the internal balconies or void and not the open road outside. Natural light is directed down these voids, some of which stretch over the entire four storeys of the house.
“There are also many spatial permutations set within the voids – ranging from the four-storey high open air-well that ventilates the powder room to the interlocking high volume entrance ‘foyer’. The interlocking voids often permit lots of visual connections between different parts of the house, giving an illusion of more spaciousness than there really is,” says the architect.
Twelve-millimetre-thick laminated glass on the few windows that do punctuate the side and front of the house buffer the interior against road noise.
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The multi-generational family who have lived here for decades know these shortcomings well and when it came to tearing down the house to rebuild, tackling the heat and noise pollution was first and foremost.
House At A Glance
Who lives here: A three-generational family
Location: Kembangan
Designers: Timur Designs
When it came to mitigating the noise, the team at Timur Designs did not want to take the well-trodden path. “A screen would have made the house look like every other house,” explains Chan Wai Kin, a partner at Timur Designs, during the Archifest tour of this house. “The design would have been all about the screen and not about the space.”