The roof soars above the outdoor living space.

The garden terrace.

A lightwell in the center of the plan brings daylight into the middle of the house.

Andra Matin first came to the attention of an International audience with the publication of his award-winning design for the LeBoYe Graphic office in Jakarta. It was one of the first projects to emerge from his fledgling practice and immediately set him apart as a designer of considerable skill.¹

The W House has similarly generated much interest and has been published in a number of journals, including GA Houses (Japan) ² and SKALA (Indonesia).³ The owner is a businessman, restaurateur and publisher whose bookshelves reveal a keen interest in architecture and design, with titles by all the leading exponents.

The house is located in the garden of his parents’ house and shares a striking green-blue swimming pool surrounded by luxuriant tropical vegetation. Approached up a gentle ramp from the car porch, a processional route through the surrounding trees gradually reveals the form of the dwelling. The upper floor is expressed as a timber louvered box with a wide oversailing roof, which “ floats ” above the more transparent ground floor. The most immediate visible quality of the house is its interlocking geometry.

The shifting geometry of the plan is readily apparent when moving through the ground floor. The plan is essentially linear, but the spatial choreography is refined, with framed views to the exterior. External walls at ground-floor level are sliding or hinged glass doors and perforated metal panels that can be opened so that the entire ground level can be connected to the garden. There is a particularly entrancing view from the kitchen through the dining room to the living area and beyond to the garden. In-between spaces and gentle ramps are elements of Andra Matin’s architectural vocabulary that appear in other houses he has designed and here, in the W House, they are fully exploited.

The principal route to the upper floor is a 900-mm-wide smooth polished concrete ramp that ascends the south façade and is expressed on the façade as a rectangular glass and steel mesh “ tube. ” The glass enclosure to the ramp is designed with vertical slots to permit permanent ventilation, while the upper floor is encircled by a double-skin wall with glass internal walls protected by an external “ skin ” of horizontal timber louvers. The first-floor accommodation includes a generous master bedroom suite, a guest bedroom and a study with an external terrace.

Materials employed include off-form concrete walls, gray polished cement floors and timber. Stainless steel and a gray laminate material are used for kitchen fittings and base units. The house
is entirely naturally ventilated, but with the option of using air-conditioning in the bedrooms.

The W House is one of the seminal houses constructed in Indonesia in the last decade. Its robust form provokes memories of the Short Farmhouse in New South Wales by Glen Murcutt, and the honest expression of materials is a reminder of the tactile appeal of Geoffrey Bawa’s houses in Sri Lanka. A haven of seclusion and calm in a hectic city, the relative simplicity of the form belies the complexity of the interior and the intensity of ideas embodied in the overall design.

The “green wall” on the boundary of the site is covered in vegetation, which reduces solar radiation.

Glazed walls slide aside to create a living room that is contiguous with the outdoor spaces.

Horizontal louvers maintain a cool interior in the guest bedroom.

The house has deep overhangs and shaded interiors—the essence of a dwelling in the tropics.

Ground floor plan.

View of the kitchen, a slightly spartan space with an off-form concrete ceiling and polished cement floors.

A narrow ramp ascends to the first floor.

Footnotes

1   I visited the Graphic Office in 1999 and, subsequently, as the editor of SPACE magazine, Singapore, I published it in edition 2002/02, pp. 90–3.

2   Winfred Hutabaret, in GA Houses 112, Japan, October 2009; also in Elle Decoration, UK, October 2009; and in GA Houses 100, Japan, September 2009.

3   Winner of SKALA Award, Indonesia, November 2007.