The apartment is for a small family of 3 located at the prestigious district 10 of Singapore.
While its location is adjacent to a busy road, it is pleasantly shielded from the traffic noise and views by having a sea of green canopies outside its living space. To leverage on the large and generous double height window along with high ceiling space, our primary design intervention was to insert a floor to ceiling library with a mezzanine viewing deck as the main focus of the apartment. The lower portion of the library is accessible from the living room while the higher areas are accessible from the level 2 study space.
Inspired by the family’s appreciation for music, we decided to use Chopin’s Nocturne Op.9 No. 2 score as a conceptual strategy for the design of the library. Like the musical notes, our vision was an array of floating planes suspended in the air via a series of thin structural members. This was achieved through the use of industry standard reinforced steel bars at 25mm and 13mm diameter welded together to form the base structure. A mezzanine deck constructed of lightweight perforated steel was further inserted between the upper and lower portions of the structural system. Finally, 63 pieces of 33mm solid white ash planks were bespoke with routed slots to rest onto the library structure without the need for any fixing to complete the library design.
