Architecture

Resided in a housing complex located at the metropolitan city of Jakarta, Indonesia, the family pursues a design that accustoms to the art of Feng Shui; an ancient Chinese traditional practice that orchestrates a harmony balance between the residents through house arrangement. Thus, the proposed design adheres to selected Feng Shui rules while instills modern living elements. To fulfill the Feng Shui beliefs, the house is separated into two wings; A living area in one, and a service area in the other. The service area comprises of back-end programs such that of laundry room, wet kitchen, and bathrooms, whilst the living area comprises of playroom, bedrooms, dining room and living room. The two wings are connected by floating glass box passages that intersect the void in the middle. Sandwiched by two masses and confined in a rectangular volume, the intersecting void is playfully and fluidly manipulated to create dramatic experience, and to dynamically reflect sunlight.

Adding to void’s element of dramatics, the material used in 2 opposing façade sides of the mass is differentiated. The façade faces at the void are laminated with wooden panels that exudes warmth and welcoming. In contrast, the other façade faces are wrapped in wooden-stamped concrete panels. Window openings are created in an un-uniformly pattern, carefully planned to the needs of each program. The result is a summation of traditional house arrangement infused in modern spatial qualities.

The project redefines the notion of the healthcare institution by challenging the architecture’s ability to adapt to today’s interest and culture in the healthcare industry. Thus, the notion of a hospital has evolved from being a “place of exile” for the sick, to being a state-of-the-art healing facility. In order to facilitate those trends, our design focuses in providing a welcoming and comforting healthcare facilities while maintaining hygiene, and realizing the hospital’s vision in the “Celebration of Life” as a translation of today’s demand.

The Monumental Void and Materiality

The hospital’s assortment of programs are all condensed into a 1,600 square meter base area with a seven-floor high above ground rectangular prism mass. Atypical to a normal hospital, this project is composed of a couple of commercial programs which are integral to our design concept. As visitors enter the main lobby, they are greeted with a grand imperial staircase that directs them into a mezzanine platform hosting a restaurant program. The restaurant is enveloped in a 24×24 m triple-height volume and an 8×8 m quadruple-height volume which turned into a grand monumental space, cascaded with natural and artificial lights. Cladded with double-skin fabric system and wrapped in indirect artificial lights, the vertical volume creates a muting spatial tunnel that puts natural ray lights and hanging art installations to shine. The dramatic spatial quality embraces the “Celebration of Life” concept where arrivals of newborns are celebrated and honored.

The project carves out 5 additional pockets of negative space that act as relief voids on the inpatient treatment areas at 5^th and 6^th floors. The negative spaces serve as semi-open healing gardens which function as positive distractions and breathing spaces for inpatients and families. By using pre-engineered natural look materials, such as homogenous tiles or wood veneers, we intended to override the infamous notion of an all-white hospital finishes, which often gives an impression of cold and intimidating, to warm and welcoming. The selection of materials is also perpetuated by blurring the indoor-outdoor environment concept. We installed outdoor sidewalk paving to the indoor environment at the lobby to create a seamlessly welcoming transition for the public. The concept is carried out all the way to the rooftop where transit passages are made semi-open with an outdoor dry garden image.

The Façade Design

Our hospital’s façade is designed to help accentuate the building’s grid framework division. The complexity of the façade’s design is furthered through two efforts; by creating two variations of glass tinted windows in correspondence to the programs’ privacy and by manipulating the frames’ orientation to highlight the big voids. The all-glass windows façade is chosen to maximize transparency from the outside to inside in purpose to create a friendly and inviting building. All spatial qualities utilized in this project are all conscientiously done to defy the pre-existing notion that healthcare institution, which is often perceived as cold and intimidating, to become warm and welcoming.

The lodging complex consisted of a studio, a 2-bedroom, and a 3-bedroom with each has access to its own kitchen and pool. In the Ground Floor area, the units are separated by a continuous water body that serves as swimming pools for 2-bedroom unit and 3-bedroom unit. The swimming pools have been programmatically divided by a floating bridge that serves as a circulation passage, encapsulated with screen walls as privacy barriers. The studio unit is stacked on top of the 2-bedroom unit mass, accommodated with its own private stairway entry at the porch of the villa and its own plunge pool at the terrace. The complex has been designed to fit for all possible renter’s scenarios; may it be renting a combination of 2 units, just 1 unit or the whole complex at once.

The villa embodies a Wabi-Sabi concept which embraces the building material’s raw imperfection look from its material manipulation process. Bolstered by owner’s aesthetic keenness towards modern tropical look, we sourced materials that highlight textural element under the tropical scheme. Each volumetric mass is enclosed under a single skin, where the material is differentiated based on the mass’s elevation and use. The windows are wrapped using the same skin creating a closed-off building that accentuates the purity of the geometrical form and the textural element of the façade materials. The aggregate offers a versatile commercial opportunity for target market who wish to lodge lavishly in living lifestyle.

Our proposal seeks to celebrate this opportunity by configuring programs of private and public in relation to the context of views and climatic condition.

The living room can be discovered at the rear side, facing east with genuine morning lights. It features a double height ceiling, connected visually from the mezzanine above. The space is spacious, thanks to the 20 meter span of slanted roof to allow the living area to have such an open space. This space can be completely open to the outdoor condition, extended to the pool and sunken pit area. The dock is right underneath, where the tenants can access directly to their private yacht.

On the other end, there are private bedrooms and a rooftop pavilion. The bedrooms have the access to a shared balcony, protected with bi-fold wooden screens to filter a harsh west-daylight orientation, while also allowing an alternative to have more privacy. Stacked on top, a rooftop pavilion offers a panoramic ocean view with water element that reflects the beauty of the architecture. A place where you could bring your friends and family to enjoy the sunset at a later day.

Architecturally, the process involved an additive sequence generated by the combination of two curves and two apertures at both ends.
The rear of the dwelling by takes the form of a sweeping A-frame roof inspired by traditional ‘rumah adat’ dwellings; while from the street, the residence appears to be a modern box. The result of this combination is a distinct twisted ceiling that blends the wall-ceiling relationship at the living room. The programmatic distribution is inverted, offering an upside-down program where the living area is positioned on the second floor, while the children’s bedrooms are allocated to the lower floors.

In order to optimize the amount of light and establish cross ventilation within these lower rooms, the wall at the hallway have been lowered. In this way, openings are generated, while parts of the volumes are subtracted and a pocket of garden is inserted on the side. The first floor was positioned adjacently, and the second floor has a linear orientation, establishing an indoor-outdoor connection to the garden located at the back of the site.