A Home to Last a Lifetime

THE STORY OF how the owners of this corner terrace house in Upper Serangoon ended up with a new home began with a simple request. "We just wanted a bigger bedroom," says Remash Nair, managing director at a consulting firm.

Mr Nair and his wife, Raadthie, had been living in their former two-storey house for about 12 years. The couple love its location. It sits in a quiet cul-de-sac, with three neighbourhood parks nearby.

The request for a bigger bedroom sounded simple enough, until they consulted with architect Matthew Lai, founder of MU Architects. "It dawned on us that we would need to create an additional floor to get the bedroom we wanted," says Mr Nair.

With a major reconstruction on the cards, client and architect decided that they might as well redesign the entire house. This was a few years ago, when the Nairs had three dogs, and wanted the house purpose-built for them.

Mr Lai designed a seamless connection between the living room and car porch for easy access and glass barriers around the garden, to keep the dogs away from the plants. Even the choice of flooring mattered, and scratch-resistant tiles that look like marble were used in the living and family rooms, and vinyl flooring for the bedrooms.

Sadly, by the time the house was completed, two dogs passed away, but the surviving pup gets the run of the house.

The couple also wanted to future-proof their home, so Mr Lai designed the home to be wheelchair-friendly with spacious access to the rooms and also had a lift installed. Mr Nair also turned his house into a smart home, so that he can control everything from the blinds, entertainment systems and security all from his phone.

With the design to make the house dog and future-friendly out of the way, Mr Lai turned his attention to the interiors and its details.

Since the living room is the first place that visitors would see, Mr Nair wanted to make a visual impact. To get that 'wow' effect, a recessed section of the living room wall was lined with copper-plated mosaic tiles, and adorned with large art works.

Mr Nair had always wanted a kitchen island, so he got his wish. The dry kitchen looks out into a shaded outdoor terrace, where the couple enjoy having their coffee

The design of the second floor is kept basic. There is a large family area, with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf displaying Mrs Nair's collection of reading material. There is also a spare bedroom with a spacious balcony overlooking the neighbourhood.

While the staircase from the first to the second floor was retained in its original concrete, a new staircase to the attic is an elegant metal construction. A new skylight was also built above the stairs to draw daytime light into the deeper parts of the house and to turn the stairways into bright transitional spaces.

The most exciting part of the house has to be the attic, which is totally devoted to the couple's private space. The new bedroom is now more than twice the size of the old, and has its own sitting area. Brick walls give it a rustic look.

The newly designed bedroom now has a walk-in wardrobe which enjoys natural light streaming in from a skylight above. The bathroom is also much larger.

While Mrs Nair couldn't get the rooftop pool she wanted because of the costs arising from the structural requirements, the couple compromised with a jacuzzi in the bathroom.

The new shower area is a definite talking point. It comes with full height glass windows on one side, prompting questions from the older generation and perhaps neighbours taking sneak peeks. But the couple needn't worry about peeping Toms, thanks to the fast growing row of plants that act as a privacy screen.

Meanwhile, Mr Lai designed a series of fins on the attic that provide sun shading and privacy too, while adding flair to the external facade. From afar, it looks like a black box floating above the house, which is why Mr Lai nicknamed the project The Black Box House.

He elaborates that "the new design now expresses the building as an elegant assemblage of modernist volumes."

Mr Nair says with a laugh, "The black box sounds very mysterious, but actually, we just wanted some privacy for our bedroom."