Brick Pier Courtyard House
Brick Pier Courtyard House
Bukit Timah
Completed 2023
Residential Architecture and Interior Design
A contemporary tropical brick house with moving tone, light and shadow, using its innate tactility to weave indoor and outdoor air spaces as a prototypical solution for long plots.
Allowing completely open pockets of natural light, air and views of the sky to animate windows, stairs and shared family spaces.
Photos by Khoo Guo Jie
Side façade of the Brick Pier Courtyard House, showing the solid brick detailing as a wall, a column and tilted brick pier louvers, giving tactility and depth to the facade.
The long, narrow plot has alternating brick treatments along the side balcony, primarily with tilted brick pier louvers mitigating privacy and giving dappled light play instead of direct sunlight.
At the entrace, a simple zig-zag play of solid stacked brick give visual interest and lightness to a front entrance wall.
From the road, there are three layers of space with recessed volumes for balconies and open facades for internal courtyard, completely breaking flatness and monotony.
At the upper-floor, a side balcony connects the spaces from front to back, through the rooms. This deliberate gap between the living spaces and the brick facade wall, creating an "outdoor" that helps buffer the closeness from the neighbours.
The side balcony connects to an internal airwell that, when side sliding windows open, connect inside to outside, creating an airwell that is also naturally ventilated.
The triple-volume void beyond the living room, soaring 6 metres high, designed as an open indoor air well with floor-to-ceiling doors and motorised windows, which when open seamlessly combines indoor and out.
Internal bedrooms have doors that look into this intimate airwell on two upper levels, creating a continuous family space vertically linked.
A new set of open staircase creates another center of the house, anchored by the stair, airwell and internal timber windows.
Diagonal sky view from inside the triple-volume void, offering residents an unexpected sense of openness despite the tight urban plot.
The front staircase, newly introduced as part of the reconstruction to serve the study, son's room, and master suite in the attic, overlooks the front block, to give an unobstructed view to the front althought the airwell is in the middle.
The new staircase connects the new entrance living, airwell to the dining.
A private family room surrounded by garden at the rear doubles up as a guest room with an en-suite bathroom.
