Gallery House by Formwerkz Architects
Gallery House by Formwerkz Architects is a house located in Singapore, designed in 2025. The property features extensive off-form concrete walls, which act as a calm backdrop to the artworks displayed throughout the space. The house’s design aims to reflect both artistry and comfort, serving as a gallery space for public events and a comfortable home for its family of five.
Balanced Artistic Space And Family Living
The house is designed with aspirations to be both a space for art display and appreciation, and be a home for the family of 5. The heritage site contained the former house of Chen Wen Hsi, which front porch was adorned with two mural paintings on both sides of a single masonry wall, carefully extracted and conserved within the house.
Public-Facing Activities and Private Living
The planning conditions of the site lend to rectangular form in plan and elevation. Its elevation expresses the duality of extroversion-introversion that is present in plan – spaces for public-facing activities on the 1st storey, and spaces for private living above. A courtyard punctuates the center of the house, drawing nature in and creating new sightlines throughout the house that are framed by windows. The lush landscape that grows around and within the house, and the mountain installation within the center courtyard, become artwork in themselves, framed and composed within windows.
Lively Operable Screens and Rectilinear Composition
The extensive off-form concrete walls of the house form a calm backdrop to the artworks displayed across the house, yet asserts itself in the strong rectilinear composition of the massing and elevation, that seeks to recall the abstract Cubist influences of the late artist and former resident. The perforated façade screen of the 2nd storey, which pattern is a figure ground abstraction of the tree canopies along the main street, forms a solid floating box above the highly porous 1st storey gallery spaces. The operable screens give liveliness to the façade, an expression of the life taking place within.
Art and Architecture Intertwined
The conserved mural is the pièce de resistance, proudly displayed on the elevation, positioned to be easily viewed by passers-by. The art and architecture of the Gallery House intertwine together to form new ways of seeing and perceiving, achieving its aspiration to contribute to the creative legacies of Singapore.
Photography courtesy of Formwerkz Architects
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