Designed by multidisciplinary practice Neri&Hu, this Singapore home reinterprets the traditional typology of a Chinese courtyard house in a new modern form that pays homage to the family’s matriarch

Well-known for its illustration of Confucian ideals, the traditional Chinese courtyard house or siheyuan is a popular typology designed for several generations of one family to live under the same roof. For this private residence, Neri&Hu were tasked with transforming a British colonial-style bungalow with hybrid elements of traditional Malay and Victorian architecture into a shared home for three siblings. The house also had to include a small memorial space in the form of a garden for their late mother, and was to retain the form of the traditional pitched roof — a defining feature of the siblings’ childhood home.

Exploring the notion of communal living, Neri&Hu reinterpreted the courtyard house typology with a two-storey structure, nestling a central courtyard at its heart. Expansive glass walls connect the communal spaces to the central courtyard, optimising the building’s cross ventilation and providing direct access to the gardens.

On the upper level, all bedrooms are housed within the roof’s steep gables so that when seen from the exterior, the house appears as a single-storey hip-roofed bungalow. Here, Neri&Hu used the form of the pitched roof as not only a symbol of shelter, but also an element that both unifies and demarcates the home’s public and private realms. Large glass walls connect to bedroom balconies where views are oriented outwards to the surrounding gardens. Through a clever sectional interplay, three double-height areas connect the communal spaces to the corridors above.

Cocooned by dense vegetation, the home’s imposing facade is striking in its grandeur. Balconies and sky wells are carved out from the volume of the pitched roof, with walls seamlessly transitioning from smooth to board-formed concrete, emulating the texture of wooden planks. A void carved in the roof volume frames a small tree in a passage that leads to the memorial garden. Overall, the modern building reinterprets and nods to tradition, providing a contemporary iteration of what communal living and collective memory can look like today.

Images / Fabian Ong