4 Sundridge House Architect: René Tan R T+Q Architects

cutting-edge tropical architecture in a global city

THE HOUSES IN THIS BOOK EPITOMISE CUTTING

EDGE RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE IN SINGAPORE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND

DEMONSTRATE A REMARKABLE SURGE OF DESIGN EXPLORATION IN THE CITY-STATE. 1

Architects in Singapore are producing work with a level of refi nement and sophistication that is comparable with the best in the world, and one would be hard pressed to fi nd a nation of similar size with such an abundance of accomplished young designers who have built independently.

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, architectural debate in Singapore, as in many Asian countries that

had formerly been colonized by European powers, revolved around the notions of Identity 2

and Critical Regionalism. 3

Prominent Singapore participants in seminars that were convened in the 1980s and 1990s included Tay Kheng Soon and William Lim Siew Wai. Both wrote at length about the social, cultural and climatic imperatives of architecture.

Lim’s Contemporary Vernacular (1998), 4

written in collabora

tion with Tan Hock Beng, extolled the merits of reinvigorating

and reinterpreting the traditional vernacular architecture of the region. His design for the Reuter House (1990) was just

such a contemporary interpretation. In contrast, the King Albert Park House (1994) by Tay Kheng Soon was designed in a

modern tropical idiom that demonstrated what Tay identifi ed in Modern Tropical Architecture (1997) 5

as ‘a language of line,

edge, mesh and shade’.

The discourse on the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ fuelled several publications, such as The Asian House (1993), 6

The Tropical Asian House (1996) 7

and The Urban Asian House (1998), 8

which placed the production of architect-designed dwell

ings within a broad theoretical framework linked to issues throughout the so-called developing world.

Other publications followed in the next decade, including Houses for the 21 st Century (2004), 9

New Directions in Tropical Architecture (2005) 10

and 25 Houses in Singapore and Malaysia (2006), 11

as publishers in the Antipodes belatedly turned their gaze on developments in Asia. 12

In 2008, David Robson’s magnifi cent volume, Beyond Bawa, 13

also drew attention to the work of a group of Singapore architects bewitched by the magical houses designed by the Sri Lankan master architect Geoffrey Bawa.

Another Singapore architect, Tang Guan Bee, wrote little, but through his built work, such as The Mountbatten House (1988) and later the Windsor Park House (1997), demonstrated a spirit of invention and audacity that captivated the imagination of many young architects entering the profession. The diverse approaches to domestic architecture of Tay, Lim and Tang laid the foundations for the explosion of design ideas in Singapore in the fi rst years of the new millennium. Signifi cantly, four of the architects featured in this book worked at some time or other with TANGGUANBEE Architects, while fi ve began their careers with William Lim Associates and three with Tay’s practice, Akitek Tenggara.

A HOUSE IN THE HUMID TROPICS

‘SPACE … IS NOT REALLY ABSTRACT. SPACE IS

SOMETHING WE CAN MODERATE AS ARCHITECTS

TO SATISFY A WHOLE RANGE OF FUNCTIONS, INCLUDING VISUAL, SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL

REQUIREMENTS. NOBODY EXCEPT THE ARCHITECT

CAN DO THIS … IT IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ROLE OF THE ARCHITECT.’ Tang Guan Bee 14

For an architect, the design of a bespoke family dwelling is a demanding yet fascinating commission. A designer rarely