Green Grass of Home

THERE ARE TERRACE houses and houses with terraces, but deep in the heart of Siglap stands a terrace house with terraces - and plants, lots of plants.

Dealing with the constraints of building a house on a narrow strip of land wedged between two single-storey homes is not uncommon in land-scarce Singapore, but architect Carl Lim faced an additional challenge. Owner Allan Loh spent much of his life in homes with green environments, and he voiced a desire "to live in a house full of trees and shrubs", with views of greenery from every room.

The solution was to build a multi-layered home, conceived as a chest of drawers such that the 'drawers' (planter boxes in this case) look like they have been pulled open to achieve a terraced effect, not unlike a layered wedding cake. The ground-floor footprint measures just 6m wide by 21m long, with each of two upper-level interiors smaller in area than the level below. Still, the finished home had space enough to fit five bedrooms, including an attic room that sits like a shiny glass box atop the structure - the 'cherry' on the cake, as it were.

The attic opens to a rooftop balcony and garden with access to a narrow corridor that leads behind each of three stepped planter boxes - replacing a conventional flat vertical façade - and ending above the master bedroom on the second storey. Strategically placed skylights beneath the planters let natural light into the room below.

On one side of the house, a gap between a double wall allows for planting in a vertical courtyard space that is open to the elements. Windows on each of the lower bedrooms and bathrooms open onto narrow spaces with plants hanging on the outer wall. Second-floor balconies at the front and rear of the house have more expansive views across the street. There is also a planter box in lieu of a railing across the front balcony.

From below, the silhouettes of plants against the sky add a sense of shape and volume. Throughout the house, from car porch to roof top, small trees and potted plants occupy flat surfaces, while orchids, lilies, bromeliads and other jungle plants hang on vertical planters. Mr. Loh, 61, a retired IT executive, estimates there are "easily" between 500 and 600 plants in and around the house, which was completed in 2017 and took about nine months to build.

"Sometimes they don't do so well because it's too shady, but all the houses I live in are sure to have plants," he says. "With this house I also wanted to have rooms with high ceilings and full-length glass windows, and an air well that would help with ventilation."

He adds, "This is my third home with plants surrounding every room. When I was young, we had a very big garden with fruit trees, and I remember helping my dad to look after the plants."

Says Mr Lim, founder of Czarl Architects: "Typically, we put planting on flat surfaces but with this house we went way beyond that. When we visited the owner's previous home, the front yard was hidden behind a dense jungle of plants - with this house we experimented with form, played with light and shadow, materials and colour."

He adds that the greenery also serves as a sun shade and a soft screen between homes that are right next to each other. "We did everything we could to help maintain a sense of privacy," he says. "It's mandatory to have screening between terrace houses but we got the neighbours to consent to having planting in-between instead of regulation screens."

The 'box' in the attic is completely surrounded by greenery and not surprisingly, it is Mr. Loh's favourite room. "It faces east and from here I can leave the curtains open and watch the sunrise," he says, "This is very much a house in a garden - the layering effect is unique, you don't get to see this everywhere. It's important to make full use of every space and so you don't feel the house is small."

The green theme is offset by grey exterior walls. The plants are maintained with the help of a self-watering system but it's not easy to keep everything healthy when plants in the deepest recesses don't receive enough light. Notes Mr Lim: "It will take some time but eventually, the whole house will disappear under the greenery."