Back in 2020, architect Rene Tan asked me to write the monograph of his firm, RT+Q Architects, which he co-founded with fellow architect TK Quek in 2014. Therein started the journey of visiting many of the firm’s houses to understand his creative ethos. In 2023, Thames & Hudson published the tome titled Rethinking the Tropical House: 20 Years of RT+Q Architects.
It features 29 of the firm’s works – a small selection from a portfolio of over 120 dwellings built over 20 years. Simply put, the houses belong to the ‘tropical modern’ classification. But given their superior design and acute attention to detailing, driven by Tan’s deep grounding in the canon of western architecture, this overused label is perhaps too pedestrian.
What is also interesting, as well as vital to any architect’s oeuvre, is that his work does not remain formulaic. Over the years, Tan’s search for authentic expressions from history, such as the rediscovery of Baroque architecture’s spatial characteristics like arched ceilings, offers refreshing takes on house design. It embodies his prevailing mantra “to put the right things in the wrong places”.
The effect is surprise and novelty. There are these aspects in this newly completed house, which is a wonderful synthesis of the firm’s assorted architectural devices. The architecture was also driven in part by the brief.
The couple that live here with their young child came with an unusual request regarding the house’s form. “We wante.
