Chinese doll's house

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 1994 by Chris Abel

The enlightened conversion of a traditional Singaporean shophouse offers an inspiring model for urban living.

The dual-use, terraced shophouses of Penang, Malacca, Kuala Lumpur and Singapor provide a constant reference point and source of inspiration for both old and new generations of Malaysian and Singaporean architects. Admired both for their shaded five-foot-ways and private atria, as well as for the diverse quality of street life with which they are associated, they are increasingly viewed as a model of low-rise, mixed use, high-density living, as relevant to today's urban needs as yesterday's.

The shophouses are much depleted in Singapore, in the wake of the early enthusiasm for total renewal, but Singaporean planners now acknowledge their value as tourist attractions, and therefore sources of revenue, if not for the quality of their architecture alone. The response has been a belated and hasty programme of conservation, often leading to a process of gentrification, with mixed results both for the previous occupants and for the quality of street life.

The rowhouse by Richard Ho at No. 12 Koon Seng Road, in the Joo Chiat Conservation area, is one of the more successful exercises of this kind. Built for Albert Lim, a prominent local architectural photographer, the pre-war house was redesigned to allow the client to live and work in the same building, in much the same way as the original merchants' houses were shaped to their owners needs.

Like all rowhouses of this type, the building has a narrow frontage combined with a very deep plan, designed to squeeze as many working families on to the same street front as possible (some of these houses are as much as 140ft deep). Following the traditional vertical pattern of dual use, the architect has place the photographer's studio, reception and other work spaces on the ground floor, and the more private living quarters above. Puncturing the approximate centre o the deep plan is a pierced light shaft, replacing the original atrium with a more compact but effective source of natural top light, which spills out into the surrounding spaces. As well as a source of natural light, the pierced shaft also acts as a spatial fulcrum, gathering to it the main vertical circulation and connecting the different spaces of the house by diagonal views down and across the void.

The upper two floors of bedrooms and living spaces are arranged much like a house-within-a-house, separated by both the light shaft and a second adjacent void into front and rear sectors, and connected on the top floor by a bridge-cum-landing.

A double-height living space at the front of the house overlooked by a front bedroom with openable, shuttered windows, completes the house-within-a-house theme, looking much like a secondary, smaller street front. The total result is part working studio, part doll's house delight, and a functional and social model for Singapore's cottage industries of the future.