CHEMPENAI HOUSE

Published on: 6 years agoAuthor: Teo Sandigliano

Situated in Damansara Heights, Kuala Lumpur, Chempenai House is a lesson in material constraint. Designed by WHBC Architects, the spectacle of this concrete home is its consideration of the surrounding Malaysian environment, and its rejection of neighborhood standards.

Standing in a neighborhood of nouveau-riche mansions, Chempenai House hides amongst the jungle-like foliage of the garden that surrounds it. Its architects describe it as “a concrete tropical box that embraces the lush jungle”. The home has been designed in a way that its exterior provides both privacy and protection from the weather extremes: monsoon and tropical sun, whilst allowing the garden to creep inside. “We designed a concrete egg-crate structure that envelopes the house to keep the heat out,” the architects explain, “but draw daylight in to create comfortable spaces within. The perforated nature of this envelope allows the existing overgrowth to grow in the volume of the house, thus softening the boundary of inside and outside.”