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level at 1.00 meter high. Connecting the inside area to the outside area, we have had: 3 staircases,
multi-purpose center reception area, living room, dining room connected to kitchen, bathroom,
and 3 bedrooms on the east side. We only had a small child of over 1 year old at that time, which
needed to be in bed with parents, therefore, the child bedroom became playroom, and another
spare bedroom was used for storage purpose. Every space in house was occupied wisely aiming
for budget control. The parents of this house do our own house cleaning as we have not included
housekeeping room in the plan.
About the issues on materials in 1969, we explored the benefit and constraint of fibre
cement sheet at 8 mm. in its thickness for north and south wall for our house. Therefore, we had
designed the light weight full Shorea wood frame divided into four continuous section for filling into
every bay of planning. The frame consisted of three components; the lower part which based on the
floor is swing and louver window, the upper part which is the light box staying above the window
till the lower part of the roof beam (ace). The 8 mm, thick fibre cement sheet were framed exactly
the same way as glass window. Walls on east and west side, they were filled with exposed brick
(no plaster finishing). Floor were reinforced concrete with Makha wood parquet finishing. This floor
system would sit on compact sand grounding. This datum line of the ground floor level was raised
at 1.00 meter above road level. This ground floor were formed by concrete block retaining side
wall with its height at 1.00 meter above the ground beam. At every 0.50 meter along their retaining
wall, it was reinforced with metal wire to bear load of the wall and compact flooring system. The
roof construction was the timber frame and finishing on top with fibre cement tiles and there is fibre
cement sheet ceiling underneath. As, there were lots of big tree in our property, from time to time,
branches have kept falling down and damaged the roof tile. Therefore, we have had to maintain the
roof many times. For our new house, we, then, decided to use metal sheet as our selected materials
instead (with fully insulated sheet on the ceiling to reduce heat transfer).
Shaded under roof at the front terrace, there were a 6 sq.m recreation area on a wooden
terrace as same as the one that we had for the art studio at the back. We had turned part of our
garage which was in its high ceiling level into storage and reading area by putting a ladder and
mezzanine up. Therefore, part of garage that was adjacent to our design studio were connected
with studio by the mezzanine designed for muti-purpose uses such as bookshelf, display for tools
and material collection. Our design studio space were extended with the more functional response
provided by such mezzanine.
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