Private residence Ponderosa pavilion Tropical Elegance

By Francesco Pagliari - 1 November 2016

Located in the northeast district of Johor Bahru, a major city on the southernmost tip of the Malay Peninsula facing the strait separating Malaysia from Singapore, this residential building is part of an up-market neighborhood abutting on one side onto a golf course. The various built elements are arranged transversally across the plot. The house itself stands in the middle of the grounds. A tennis court lies alongside the house on the southwest side while an articulated pool stretches the full length of the villa. Although the focal point of the program, the house is designed to resonate with its surroundings. A parallelepiped, the building’s geometrical simplicity combines elegance and contemporary design in perfect harmony with its tropical setting where interiors and exteriors traditionally form a constant continuum. Resting on a dark granite block, the house is accessed via a short staircase. Large central sliding glazed walls on the main façades (oriented northeast and southwest respectively) provide through-views and the essential openness of the tropical house. The centrally placed living area is appropriately a multiple-function open space with stone flooring and timber-clad walls. A place of socialization and conviviality offering many different views, it also, however, provides quiet corners from which to look out onto air-cooling water just outside. The measured geometrical proportions geared to the tropical context and the uncluttered use of essential materials - stone, timber, steel-framed glazing - lend a refined elegance to the building, underlying its linear development. The house comprises a string of adjoining environments, a dynamic echoed outside by the changing shapes and levels of the different pools, contributing to the different perceptions to be had from the house onto the pool. Water cascades into the pool through long horizontal metal slits in the northern perimeter wall to lap around the building’s base. The...