MeyerHouse designed by WOHA Architects bagged the top award in the residential category. The project is a five-storey attic development overlooking an internal forested garden and public park. The building form is scaled as a traditional Chateau with bespoke louvre screens enhancing privacy. Residences are accessed individually via home lifts from a sunlit lower ground onto living spaces on the upper levels nestled amongst the greenery.
MeyerHouse sits in Singapore’s prime eastern residential enclave. Comprising 56 large-format residences with amenities on a one-hectare site, the bungalow-apartments-in-the-sky present linear views across the estate and an adjacent one-hectare park.
The five-storey attic development is arrayed in a contiguous ‘C’ configuration, with all units overlooking an internal forested garden and out across the borrowed landscape of the adjacent public park that was upgraded to create a seamless datum of expanded greenery with facilities benefiting residents and the wider community.
The building adopts a ‘House-in-a-House’ principle by amalgamating units into a form scaled to a traditional French Chateau. Its stately expressionism and uniform façade of bespoke glass fibre reinforced concrete louvres offer privacy to residents, screen building services, and abstract the building envelop into a sculptural form that looks striking at night, thanks to the lighting.
The internal undulating English gardens with flowering plants and tall trees are cocooned by timber blinds that screen the residences. An axial pool reinforces long views framed by a low-slung stone house that consolidates communal lounges and entertainment amenities.
A series of terracing gardens cascade down onto the lower ground levels, bathing the subterranean water courts and collonaded walkways with natural daylight and ventilation. Communal amenities are doubled by this additional sun-lit level, with the arrival lobbies, drop-offs, and gym sitting below the gardens above. Residences are accessed off these gardens and water courts.
Arriving at their bungalows, residents drive up to their lower-ground private ‘car porch’ and access lobbies connected to their upper-level residence via a direct home lift, where ultra-wide living spaces extend onto large outdoor rooms nestled among the greenery. A combination of screens, blinds, and trellises offer residents control over privacy and openness to the gardens and nature.
Balcony overlooking the adjacent public park
Photo credit: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Residence interior modulated by exterior timber screening
Photo credit: Patrick Bingham-Hall
Wide living spaces extend onto large outdoor rooms
Photo credit: Darren Soh
Residence lobby can be accessed directly off the private carpark
Photo credit: Darren Soh
Jury Citation
The jury was impressed by the architect’s single-mindedness in the systemisation of components and configuration in plans and elevation, culminating in a well-resolved five-storey “Bungalow Apartments-in-the-Sky” development.
Overall, the beautifully detailed and handsome building exudes quiet confidence in its residential enclave. Standing out in the current trend of architectural exuberance, this architecture is a unique work of restraint elegance and sophistication. For these reasons, the jury unanimously accorded the project Design of the Year.
You might also like:
