A Flexible Apartment for a Singapore-based Social Worker
Bukit Batok is a quiet residential area north west of Singapore, known for its greenery and proximity to several nature preserves. It is also home to a client of interior designer Dess Chew of Singapore-based Three-D Conceptwerke. This client, a social worker who loves to do painting and Chinese calligraphy, turned to Chew for help with turning her new 38sqm/409sqft apartment into a comfortable, functional space that could accommodate her lifestyle and hobbies. The ultimate design, aptly titled Interim Spaces, does just that through minor interventions with a major impact.
Multiple Purposes for Multiple Uses
The original apartment, as Chew first discovered it, was a simple one bedroom with a kitchen next to the entrance separated from the bedroom and living room by a hallway with a bathroom and shelter off of it. Little was done to alter the layout as a whole, but the partial wall separating the bedroom from the living room was removed to create one shared open space that would be used for sleeping, dining, working, relaxing, and creating. Yet, even with all these purposes, the space itself feels light and rather minimalist – a result of Chew’s considered contrivance of multiple purpose items: “Creating various functions is very important”, he explained to Never Too Small. “It allows the inhabitants to shift things to work in a more effective manner, regardless of whether they are staying in a huge apartment or small apartment”.
This ethos is best realised in the furniture, both built-in and mobile, of the mixed-use room. In its daytime mode, the room features only a wall-to-wall bookshelf bench, a lightweight two-seater sofa, and a dining table on wheels with stacking stools for chairs. With the exception of the bookshelf, all of these items can be easily moved around depending on whether she is watching TV, having friends over for dinner, working, or practising her calligraphy. By evening, the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling unit to the opposite end of the room comes alive. A hydraulic Murphy bed folds out from the lower left corner to reveal a series of small niche shelves – replete with an outlet for charging her phone – that serve as a bedside table. The surrounding cabinets act as general storage as well as a wardrobe with a nifty and efficient pull-down hanger.
A Consistent and Cohesive Backdrop
Elsewhere in the home, small adjustments following the same ethos were made here and there, always prioritising the client’s lifestyle while still allowing room for variations from the routine. The flexibility, however, is balanced by a cohesion of materials and palettes. Consistent throughout the whole apartment is its neutral colourway found in the light quartz countertops, laminate flooring, and wood cabinetry. Concealed LED lightstrips around the circumferences of the walls and cabinets reinforced the pared-back and cohesive materials, further allowing the versatile furniture and lifestyle its spot in the sun. For Chew, all of this – from the priority on adaptability to the cohesive materiality – is about enabling his clients “to live in their own fruitful manner”, rather than a prescribed one.
