The Moving House

The Moving House is a walk-up apartment located at Joo Chiat Road, Singapore, designed for a young couple and their two little dachshunds. It was approached as an aspirational first home. The two of them lead hectic lifestyles, generally both having very active social calendars.

We named the project "Moving House" because we imagined how the inhabitants would move around their new home which led circulation to become the main design attribute. At the same time, we thought that moving as an emotive word would represent how we designed the interiors like a hospitality project, to evoke the senses through the use of textures & material, light and even sound.

The main design move was to work the apartment's circulation into loops with no end. As a result, there are no cul-de-sacs within the apartment. The spatial sequence and dialogue between all the spaces was quite unique compared to typical layouts where each room is usually a dead-end. This was tailored to the client's active lifestyle and also helped to amplify the amount of space in a long & narrow apartment
perceptively.

Another main design move was the re-configuring of layout; conversational & activity-based spaces were moved to the side of the house that fronts the main street to absorb the bustle of Joo Chiat Rd, while private spaces of repose were shifted to the quieter side of the house. As the unit was on the top floor of a pitched roof building, old ceilings were torn to gain height in the communal spaces. Aesthetically, it was crafted to reflect the client's aspirations of living in a New York loft as well as a response to the shop house site context drawing contrast of old textures with new modern surfaces.

Read more at openstudio.sg