A Tactile, Timeless Home
Takenouchi Webb has designed an elegant, textural apartment in Singapore, led by the family’s different interests
Singapore-based studio Takenouchi Webb is known for its deftness with manipulating materials to create textural spaces, and this apartment in the WOHA-designed condominium MeyerHouse is one example. Many exquisitely designed elements become focal points, while utilitarian functions are elevated to celebrate domestic events.
‘Both owners work mostly from home and are passionate about their respective hobbies. The husband enjoys free diving and making pizza, and the wife is very much into cooking and music. These became quite strong factors when deciding on the functional aspects of the design,’ says Marc Webb, who runs the studio with his wife Naoko Takenouchi.
Original finishes such as dark-laminated walls in the basement lift lobby and patterned parquet flooring are matched with lime-plaster surfaces where, Webb says, ‘the handmade quality of the material is visible’. This craft-led approach continues in a wall of timber beading and woven straw wallpaper on the other side of the living room, which conceals the doors to the main bedroom and wet kitchen.
A leitmotif of arches and curves softens hard edges and give purposeful embellishment to functional elements, such as an arch that frames a sliding door in the basement leading into a storeroom for the husband’s diving equipment. A custom metal shelf in the basement and scalloped walls in the main bedroom continue this language.
The apartment’s open-plan living and dining areas are subtly segmented through the thoughtful use of furniture and furnishings. ‘A large rug defines the living room, with a customised Blue Roma marble coffee table, with integrated drawers to store board games,’ Webb notes. Two armchairs from House of Finn Juhl accompany a marble table from Tacchini, a designated area for the husband to play the Japanese game Go with his son.
The owners are passionate about cooking, so part of the brief was to extend the kitchen into the living area. ‘We designed a green onyx counter that can be used as a breakfast bar, but also integrates at the back a specialist baking oven and sink to enable it to become a working kitchen counter,’ Webb explains.
Another bespoke element that brings delight to daily tasks is a work station on the balcony for the husband’s pizza-making hobby, complete with a pizza oven, built-in refrigerator and storage drawers for the dough to rest. Furniture and lighting pieces from brands such as Time & Style, Apparatus Studio, Bassam Fellows and vintage store Noden complete the home’s relaxed, eloquent character.
Text by Luo Jingmei
Images by Studio Periphery
