The Camborne Road House was built for a successful entrepreneurial husband and wife and their two grown-up children who are both working. The owners have a strong interest in Chinese art forms–the wife enjoys Chinese painting while her husband practises calligraphy.

After the couple acquired the 1,500 square metre site, it was divided into two lots, one of 1,000 square metres and the other 500 square metres. The daughter will occupy the house on the 500 square metre lot when she eventually sets up a family. Meanwhile, it is rented out. The 1,000 square metre lot has two dwellings on it–the parents’ house and the son’s 150 square metre self-contained dwelling (comparable in size to a city apartment). The brief reflected the family’s strong traditional Asian values and their desire to live together as an extended family. It was an extremely pragmatic decision because the land value has been maximized.

The mean level of the site is a storey above road level. Thus, entry is via a basement that is on grade with the road. The two lots are composed as one large house with three self-contained entities.

These are grouped around an open-to-sky courtyard that organizes the space from basement to rooftop. The unit intended for the daughter forms one wing of the complex. The basement entry is shared by the parents and son, whose dwelling forms an apartment-like annex facing Camborne Road, with a spectacular western view over an infinity pool towards the Singapore Command House, Ong Teng Cheong’s workplace when he was President of the Republic.

The parents’ house is an ‘L’-shaped single-storey structure at the rear, embracing the courtyard. The living/dining area is constructed down the long side of the ‘L’, and shares a patio and the 20-metre-long pool with the son’s living/dining area. At the centre of the rear wing, facing the internal courtyard, is the parents’ study, overlooking their son’s house. The study is given the central position in the composition to reflect the cultural and aesthetic values that underpin the family. It was originally designed as the only double-volume space in the house but the internal spatial quality was compromised when the daughter requested a room in her parent’s house. This was inserted in the upper part of the study.

The three-level central courtyard around which the house is organized provides different experiences on the various levels. As one enters the house from the basement, it is framed in apertures and revealed in part. At the second level, the parents’ house enjoys a full view of the courtyard from different angles within different rooms. At this level, the son’s house looks out to the swimming pool and does not share the courtyard view. At the third level, both the son’s and the daughter’s dwellings look down and into the central court. The roof of the parents’ house, a landscaped terrace, provides another space where the family can interact.

The design of the family compound of ‘three houses in one’ attempts to resolve the demands of complex traditional values into a coherent whole. It solves to some extent what Leon van Schaik has described as the ‘culture of knowing and not knowing’.

The living room of the son’s unit offers spectacular views towards Singapore Command House.

The son’s living and dining area overlooks the lap pool.

The house is deliberately low key when observed from the road. Notwithstanding its excellent detailing, it could be missed by passers-by, for there is no attempt to proclaim its presence loudly. The entrance is through a wide, sliding door into an underground car park and from here, via a partially concealed door, into the house lobby.

Here, the mood changes dramatically, for at this point there is a visible shift in the architectural intentions. Beyond the glazed inner wall of the lobby, the three-storey-high courtyard has almost civic proportions, with semi-mature trees, striated grey granite walls and layers of private space. The entrance lobby marks a key threshold in the house, because at this point there are two possible routes. The parents can elect to bypass the shared areas of the multigenerational house and proceed along a gently ascending corridor to the rear of the site, where they emerge at the entrance to their own unit.

This is a very modest house when seen from the street but within is an utterly surprising courtyard and a processional route that loops around the court and, via a long gallery, reaches the parents’ dwelling. The deep courtyard is the focus of the composition. The design explores views in and out, distant views through trees to Command House and more controlled connections through narrow, vertical windows into the central courtyard.

The central courtyard has almost civic proportions. Its grey striated walls are slightly austere.

A quiet place for reflection in the landscaped courtyard.

Mok Wei Wei has devised an extremely sophisticated inter-locking plan, with a complex arrangement of three parts surrounding the courtyard. The multigenerational dwelling is experienced quite differently by the various users and the design concept explores the interaction and negotiations between the generations.

The west-facing patio shared by the parents and their children.

The house has a sophisticated interlocking plan as shown by the first storey plan.

The rooftop terrace above the parents’ dwelling links to the son’s unit.

Section through the central courtyard.

The entrance elevation is deliberately low key.