Imagined for a mature plot in Damansara Heights where an older bungalow stands, the concept keeps the address and begins again: a quiet, private house gathered around a courtyard of still water and one shade tree.
The old house is taken down with care; the plot, its mature neighbours and the memory of the place remain. In its place the concept proposes a house that turns its back to the street. A long wall of lime plaster and honed stone faces the road, broken only by a bronze door. Beyond it, every principal room opens onto a courtyard where a single tree rises from a pool of still water.
The family would live around the courtyard rather than beside a garden. Mornings begin in the kitchen, where the light arrives low across the water; children cross the shaded colonnade to their rooms; guests are received in the glass dining pavilion, which sits within the courtyard like a lantern. At night the tree is lit from below, and the whole house seems to draw its breath around it.
Deep eaves shade every glazed wall, so the courtyard can stay open through the heat of the afternoon. Air is drawn across the water and out through high clerestories, cooling the rooms before any machine is switched on. Privacy is arranged in layers: receiving rooms at the front, family rooms along the courtyard, the principal suite above, screened by dark teak. Nothing is decorative that is not also useful.
