Singapore is known for many things – good food, top-notch infrastructure and, not to forget, our world-famous architectural icons located within the city centre and beyond. But it isn’t just Jewel Changi Airport, Marina Bay Sands or any other CBD skyscraper that’s worthy of being in the books.
Therein our neighbourhoods lie many pretty houses too, and we’re not just talking about our iconic and unique HDB facades. Our architectural prowess is also manifested within our landed home districts, where you’ll see different stylistic designs blending together to build interesting, and very beautiful houses that can’t be found elsewhere.
With that, here are 9 gorgeous landed homes in Singapore that’s worthy of scoring a page in Architectural Digest.
Cube House – Sleek, angular facade with wood accents
Image credit: Ming Architects
Search up “cube house” and the top hit will likely be the colourful, innovatively-designed tourist attraction in Rotterdam. Its namesake can also be found within downtown Singapore, albeit in a more minimalist fashion.
Designed by Ming Architects, Cube House looks like it belongs to the landscape of a Scandinavian countryside, with wood accents aligned along the gates and doors.
Wood frames are also lined around the window edges, acting as a screen box to shield light away while adding a zen flavour to the home.
Image credit: Ming Architects
With a sharp, angular facade and a clean white palette, the home exudes a very “wintery” look, which is further brought forth by the leafless tree on the second floor balcony. It’s evident that the home is inspired by stacked volumes, which creates many semi-open areas where you can inject nature into it.
Image credit: Ming Architects
Meanwhile, the sleek boldness of the home comes through in its interior. In the stairwell, you’ll come across a full-size window panel and a feature wall that plays around with geometric patterns, the latter of which infuses the diagonal lines from the stairs.
Lightwell House – Countryside gable-inspired roof
Image credit: TA.LE Architects
Talk about going for a resort holiday and you’ll count the residents of Lightwell House as lucky people. Located along Serangoon Gardens, Not only do its greenery and natural stone walls create a Balinese resort-like feel, it’s also reminiscent of the European countryside.
Image credit: TA.LE Architects
The centrepiece of the home is none other than the gable-inspired roof with a built-in sky light. Natural light gushes down 3 levels right into the living patio, and gets reflected off the mid-wooden surfaces amongst the walls, staircases and furniture.
Coupled with the vines that drape down the stairway, this makes the inhabitants feel cosy, while also in touch with the outdoors.
The Greja House – All-white “box house”
Image credit: Park + Associates
Usually, calling a home a “box” isn’t the best compliment; it implies the house is just a boring, cookie-cutter design. Not for The Greja House, though.
Image credit: Park + Associates
Located within the charming eastside ‘hood of Bedok, the home makes good use of clean white colours, as well as translucent walls along the high ceilings to maximise natural light. Being a slightly unorthodox choice, a distinct contemporary flavour ends up being channelled into the design.
Image credit: Park + Associates
A rectangular archway oversees the corridor entrance, which seamlessly blends into the zen garden and the vertical green wall opposite. These create touchpoints to nature within the home, as well as a unique duplicity with the artificiality of the facade.
Image credit: Park + Associates
Another talking point in the home would be its spiral staircase which extends across all the floors into the zen pond downstairs. Together with its light wooden texture, this creates a meditative quality right at the centre of the home.
Perforated House – Elevated with “origami” roof
Image credit: ArchDaily
In this age of sustainability, many are finding creative, exciting ways to integrate natural light, ventilation and greenery at home.
In Perforated House, its frontal “origami” facade has tilted wooden panes, which introduces natural light into a mini front lawn decked with lush greenery, and a spiral staircase that goes to the top floor.
Image credit: AR43 Architects
Since stone releases heat frequently, the gravel roof further cools the house down. Random slits of square spaces are also drilled out to let more light flow, which simultaneously creates more playful shadows downstairs.
Image credit: AR43 Architects
On the top floor, you’ll see a fireside-looking attic. With dim lighting and wooden furniture, it carves out a warm and cosy space which makes it the home’s go-to chillax spot.
Envelope House – Zen gardening with interior lily pond
Image credit: Asolidplan
Envelope House is constructed in a similar manner to a flask – through its landscape double-skin feature, a layer of trees is enclosed in between. This pulls double duty by not only shielding the house away from the harsh afternoon sun, but retaining the passageway for cool air to flow right into the home.
Image credit: Asolidplan
Being a multi-generational home, each floor is curated for the elderly parents, the young family and for communal use respectively. Yet, the entire house is connected with a central garden courtyard, which is made more charming with a lily pond, and bits of vertical gardening which punctuates across the 3 floors.
Corridors and mini mezzanine areas face towards each other to bring about chance encounters within the family.
Image credit: Asolidplan
Siglap – Japandi with loft interior
Image credit: The Local INN.terior
In space-scarce Singapore, scoring a loft apartment is akin to striking the lottery when buying a flat or condo. As such, one could say that the owners of this Siglap home have gotten twice the charm – not only do they get to enjoy a high ceiling, they get the coveted square footage of a landed home.
Apart from letting wood be the thematic constant of the home, the homeowners also chose minimalist furniture and have kept open spaces uncluttered, ticking the boxes of the Japandi style book. But with the high, gable-like ceiling, you could say that the house has been brought into the territory of a Japandi x farmhouse crossover.
Image credit: The Local INN.terior
Walk up to the top floor and you’ll see the loft-style bedroom, which very much resembles the popular Muji aesthetic many strive to have in their homes.
83 Braemar Drive – Soft brutalist with Tokyo vibes
Image credit: Monocot Studio
Although some may feel Brutalism is too harsh and utilitarian, it’s still found its way back to the mainstream recently, and into this landed home on Braemar Drive.
Adopting a softer approach to the style, the home does away with the industrial exterior and uses a clean white palette instead. Yet, it still retains brutalist qualities through its angular facade, with tastefully designed circles thrown here and there.
Plus, having the windows built deeper into the walls allows for a mellow, romantic contrast during the nighttimes.
Image credit: Monocot Studio
The interior takes on a darker tone; while Scandi decor was used for the living area, the walls and mezzanine areas border on the industrial style. This is further amplified by the home’s high ceilings, which are lined with concrete panels that light up.
Image credit: Monocot Studio
Even within the biggest of homes, there’ll be a few quiet nooks nestled around for residents to cosy up within.
For this home, it’s the top-most floor of the home that features a quadrant-shaped design; the designers here have cleverly made use of the room’s curved interior for a curved, fluid bookshelf that houses the homeowners prized collection of paraphernalia.
a specially curated bookshelf alongside it. With Japanese figurines and books coupled with the Muji-esque furniture, owners get to enjoy their own mini Tokyo apartment at home.
House of Trees – Resort-like with lush landscaping
Image credit: L Architects
The likes of CapitaSpring Green Oasis and Gardens By The Bay are testaments that the mark of landscape architects in the design world will only grow bigger. Especially within landed houses, you can beautify your home by leaps and bounds just with a bit of fancy green fingers. House of Trees is proof of that.
Image credit: Finbarr Fallon
Having garnered a merit prize during the Singapore Architectural Awards this year, this multigenerational abode is made of 2 conjoined houses, and has 12 big trees planted in front of it. This helps to block off the perpetual noise from the busy 6-lane road it faces, which was one of the main concerns to be addressed.
Image credit: Finbarr Fallon
To make the rooms cosy and intimate, the owners tipped towards a more Japanese zen flavour for the decor. Step outside and you get to relish the lush greenery that lines the balconies across the house. It’s almost like having your own private spa retreat at home.
Camo House – Double skin with “hole-puncher” motif
Image credit: ArchDaily
Picture a building that’s enclosed with a patterned metallic facade and you’d probably think it must be somewhere within the atas CBD.
That said, you’d be finding Camo House tucked within the east coast vicinity, with a “hole-puncher” facade made of perforated aluminium screen that’ll glimmer in the sunlight as you drive past.
Image credit: ArchDaily
Being closely located along the coast, the home gets its generous share of cooling sea breeze during the mornings and evenings.
In some sense, the house looks like a present of sorts waiting to be unwrapped. Since the perforated screen boxes up the entire home, not only does it give residents privacy, it shields the house away from harsh sunlight while facilitating proper ventilation.
Image credit: ArchDaily
Interestingly, while you’d think the house is visually outstanding to its neighbours, it’s actually constructed with the intention to camouflage and blend into the surrounding trees. Using visual programming softwares, a dot matrix system was created based on the very trees and foliage seen outside the house.
Gorgeous landed homes in Singapore
Whenever we think about houses in Singapore, our minds either shift to the good ol’ HDBs that the majority of us call home, or the huge, snazzy GCBs that the same bulk of us can only dream of owning. Singapore being a real estate gold mine, though, it’s obvious that can’t be all that we have.
Somewhere in between lie these beautiful landed homes – not only do their interiors score points, these homes bravely experiment with their external facades such that they create architectures that are highly original. As such, don’t be surprised if they score full features in international magazines.
Find more chio houses in SG:
- Colonial-esque HDB in Holland Village
- Greatest penthouses in Singapore
- Lush greenery condos in SG
- Next-level influencer homes in SG
- Hidden streets with rich GCBs in SG
Cover image adapted from: AR43 Architects, L Architects, Asolidplan, Park + Associates
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