Water cooled house. Singapore.
we’re looking at a home where water not only provides a serene and natural surrounding but is engineered to cool the home as well.
a spiral staircase leads from the ground-floor entrance foyer to the second-story living area.
above: the second-story is the main living room and study. the elevated layout is an unobstructed pavilion-style structure to fully appreciate the natural surroundings.
on the ground-floor, the residential and service functions of the house are delineated by a long continuous light and air corridor that is paralleled below by a similarly long and continuous koi pond. the pathway running along-side the pond that leads to the bedrooms hides the substantial service areas which are beyond the pathway wall.
as with the second-story pond, the air corridor and ground-floor koi pond is also designed to facilitate in micro-cooling the first storey rooms and spaces. the pathway is a conduit for prevailing breezes; the koi pond’s thirty metre length and two metre width exposes a sixty square metre surface area within the house to those breezes for evaporative cooling.
as a gesture to the prominent role that water plays within the residence, an oculus within the pond highlights the main entrance, the circle of sunlight cooled and animated by the constantly changing sinusoidal patterns of refracted rays through the water above.
Specifications:
location: Singapore
site Area: 1634 sqm
completion: Nov 2009
Architect: wallflower architecture + design
via archinnovations