Design discovery: A house that slowly reveals its owners’ personality

HOMEOWNERS who know who they want to work with often take their architect with them house-hunting. That is exactly what a couple with two teenage daughters did, leading to their eventual purchase of a semi-detached house on a 4,600 square foot, square-shaped plot in Sunset Way.

Entrusting YWA Studio’s Tan Yue Wei with the makeover, the homeowners, who are in the insurance industry, were open to his design ideas. Their only requests were that the ground floor space be opened up, the rooms are spacious, more sunlight should enter the home, and air circulation is improved.

On his part, Tan wanted to keep the architectural language simple but alter the box shape that so often defines such houses. “We had to break the lines to make it look more lightweight and contemporary,” says the architect, who also opened up the house with more windows and knocked down “many walls”.