Nuanced materiality: Kerry Hill has established an approach to South-east Asian building that combines Modern Movement disciplines with an engagement with tropical climates - Kerry Hill Architects - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, July, 2002 by Robert Powell

The Mirzan House is located in a secluded valley, surrounded by steeply rising ground and lofty trees close to the centre of the Malaysian capital. Visitors' cars arrive via a narrow road and pass a security checkpoint before swinging sharply into a paved motor court.

Like other projects by Kerry Hill Architects, the house exhibits a clear plan. Explaining his desire for clarity, Kerry Hill has said: 'The plan is seen as a mode of distilling elements into a clear diagram, a key to the scheme.' So the plan of the house is an asymmetrical composition of solids, voids and planes, related to a primary axis, with walls extending outwards to frame views of the valley and to embrace soft landscapes and paved courtyards.

A projecting flat-roofed portico gives access to a wide covered gallery, a promenade architecturale some 60 metres in length, which runs the full length of the house from east to west and which is open along its southern flank. This linear route is the principal organizing device and one that Hill has employed successfully in earlier projects.

To the south of this long gallery are three attached pavilions of varying proportions and height. The first is a double-storey reception hall with an adjoining guest suite; the second is used for formal dining. Both are linked by flat stone bridges across a linear reflecting pool which runs parallel to the gallery.

A third pavilion, housing the family, is set at a slight distance from the other accommodation and terminates the east-west axis. The children's bedrooms, at second-storey level in this pavilion, span the master bedroom and the family room, framing a view of the pool deck beyond. The three pavilions are all one room deep, permitting cross ventilation, but also have the option of using air conditioning.

To the north of the gallery, concealed by a timber-clad screen wall, are the servant spaces (to use Louis Kahn's terminology), commencing with a four-car garage and an administrative office, leading to driver and domestic staff accommodation, wet and dry kitchens and food preparation spaces. These spaces can be separately accessed via a service walkway running along the north facade of the house.

A singular feature of the house is the spatial separation of functions, although each activity relates to, and returns to, the dominant linear east-west axis. The house incorporates a hierarchy of privacy, with a choreographed route from the arrival courtyard, to the air-conditioned public reception hall, to the dining pavilion and finally to the private and most secure family areas.

The intention is to extend the house to the south with the addition of a guest pavilion and a tennis court. At the extreme western end of the rectangular site is a recreation court with a 25-metre swimming pool. Beyond the low boundary wall that marks the limit of the site, the forested terrain ascends abruptly making access almost impossible from the head of the valley.

The principal rooms look into a soft-landscaped courtyard bounded by a low hedge. Eight torches, which can be dramatically lit in the evening, are arranged in an orthogonal pattern on the lawn outside the dining room.

The Mirzan House continues Kerry Hill's development of a regional modern architecture which I have discussed elsewhere in relation to the Cluny Hill House (1998) in Singapore. The language is one of abstract modernism overlaying, or overlaid by, local typologies. The first storey is predominantly masonry while the second storey is lighter, mainly clad in timber, with projecting fenestration that simulates traditional monsoon windows, above which overhanging, low-pitched hipped roofs are covered with hardwood shingles. Together with the use of louvred timber screens and reflecting pools, they create a calm and richly nuanced materiality that is enhanced by a muted palette of colours. Simplicity is the keynote of the reductionist architectural language but it also engages directly with the tropical climate.

As Geoffrey London has perceptively noted: 'Like an illustrious group of architects from the West -- Wright, Le Corbusier, Kahn -- Hill's modernist work has been enriched by accommodating the traditions of the East.'

The result in the case of the Mirzan House is a dramatic composition that responds magnificently to a site of considerable natural beauty.