Modern Minimalist House Design in Singapore by Ong & Ong
Designed by Ong & Ong, this house in Singapore is one of the greatest examples of modern and minimalist house design. Even though it’s so contemporary it also is very well balanced with nature. The concept of the design is to create open and filled with light living space which also has some privacy. The first floor has glazed walls that leads directly to the pool. This pool with a garden near by separates house for two pieces and is a perfect place to relax and spent time with friends and family. The entire second floor in the main section of the house is allocated for a master bedroom/study space with an en suite bathroom. The interior is done in minimalist style with modern materials and hidden TV and music appliances. [Ong & Ong, source]
November 13th, 2009 at 9:32 am
This is a SERIOUSLY scary house. Exterior colonialist façade. Inside, some kind of vertical sci-fi Mao museum hell where ideas are whited out and even the climbing plants can’t find purchase on the sides of the sheer drop down (how do they clean between those vertical metal slats?). I wonder whether there is anything the inhabitants do that doesn’t involve some kind of water torture; we see the pool dominating the living room, the pool dominating the other kitchen end, the shower, the bath, the kitchen sink… in a climate as extremely humid as Singapore’s, everything in the house must be damp and tacky to touch …and that white-eyed monstrous portrait (Mao again?) on the left wall is horrific.
I don’t see a way out of that pool. No ladder, no steps. No way out of the cartoon blurred falling lines shaft at the bottom of which the pool continues to visually plunge ever downward. I feel for that poor lonely tree. Why do architects always sentence poor, often little, trees to solitary confinement in these terrible imprisoning courtyards? The walls are confining, squeezing inward from the sides. The stairs are sharp, like a drill-bit.
So, what is the statement being made here? ‘We are believers in the capitalist god, who keep Mao prisoner and force his portrait to watch us acquire and spend’ or is it ‘We display a mere façade of capitalist sympathy, while in reality our entire interior is a shrine to Communism and to no-privacy-or-colour-or-other-personal-expression-permitted’? Either way, there is something cruel at work.
It is strange to me that this style is called ‘minimalist’ when in fact it is so often, as here, absolutely loaded with signs.