Shanghai-based architecture firm, Neri&Hu, has completed a house in Singapore designing the living spaces arranged around a central garden that recalls the arrangement of a traditional Chinese courtyard house or siheyuan.

Neri&Hu was commissioned to design a house for three siblings that wanted a new, larger residence that recalls the typology pitched-roof form of their childhood home. The architects proposed a design based on traditional siheyuan residences, which typically accommodate multi-generational families in buildings with a central courtyard.
"To live under the same roof means to live together, and this metaphor is the nexus that ties the notion of community, especially in an intimate context, to the form crafted for this project."

In this project, Neri&Hu have explored how the notions of community life and collective memory can be expressed spatially. The original site featured a lush green border that formed a natural green buffer along the perimeter, a feature the architects have retained.

The form of the building references the previous house, with elements such as deep eaves borrowed from traditional Malay houses. The building is organized on two floors, placing all the common spaces around the central garden, which occupies the space of the patio and serves as a garden to remember the mother of the family.

The large roof contains private areas including upstairs bedrooms, while from the outside the building retains the appearance of a single-storey hipped-roof bungalow.
 


The House of Remembrance by Neri&Hu. Photograph by Fabian Ong

Project description by Neri&Hu

The traditional Chinese courtyard house or siheyuan is a typology well-known for its illustration of Confucian ideals, accommodating extended family units wherein many generations live under one roof. To live under the same roof means to live together, and this metaphor is the nexus that ties the notion of community, especially in an intimate context, to the form crafted for this project. For this private residence commission, Neri&Hu is given a set of unique requests by the client: the new house constructed in place of the previous one should accommodate all three siblings, who as adults have outgrown their shared house; it should include a small memorial space in the form of a garden for their late mother; lastly, the new construction should retain the memory of the pitched-roof form, a defining feature of their childhood home.

The previous house was built in the style of the British colonial bungalow, with hybrid elements of traditional Malay houses such as deep roof eaves for rain sheltering, as well as Victorian details. Understanding the functional importance of the roof and the client’s emotional attachment to its form, Neri&Hu embrace the symbolic nature of the pitched roof and combine it with a reinterpretation of the courtyard house.

In this project, Neri&Hu have explored how notions of communal living and collective memory can be expressed spatially. The original site featured a lushly vegetated edge that formed a natural green buffer along the perimeter, a feature that architects have retained. The new two-story house organizes all communal spaces around a central garden, which occupies the courtyard space serving as a memorial garden for the family’s matriarch.

The ground level is extroverted in nature, with expansive glass walls to connect all spaces to the gardens along the edge of the site. Neri&Hu aim to maximize visual transparency from the communal areas – living room, open kitchen, dining room, and study, so that from the ground floor the inhabitants may look into the central memorial garden while cocooned by the dense vegetation surrounding the house. Large glass doors can slide open so that in optimal temperate conditions the house can take advantage of cross ventilation and direct access to the gardens.

For the upper level, Neri&Hu pursue the idea of the pitched-roof form as not only a signifier of shelter but also an element that both unifies and demarcates the public and private realms. All private bedrooms, located on the upper introverted level, are housed within the roof’s steep gables so that when seen from the exterior, the house retains the appearance of a single-story hipped-roof bungalow. Skylights and large glass walls connect to bedroom balconies where views are oriented outwards to the perimeter garden spaces. Through sectional interplay, the design team introduce three double-height areas to connect the communal functions and the corridors above. These spaces of interpenetration create vertical visual connections to allow one to peer into the public realm from the private.

One can see a carved void in the roof volume, which frames a small tree before arriving at the central memorial garden. On the exterior, where balconies and sky wells are carved out from the volume of the pitched-roof form, the walls transition from smooth to board-formed concrete to take on the texture of wooden planks.

The circulation on the ground floor is based on the shape of the circle to reinforce the ambulatory experience of walking in the round and to define the memorial space as a sacred element. Since the circle has no edges or terminating vantage points, it allows one to always find a return to the center both spiritually and physically. The garden symbolically defines the heart of the home as an ever-palpable void, persisting as the common backdrop to the collective lives of all inhabitants.

More information

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Architects
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Neri&Hu Design and Research Office.
Partners-in-charge.- Lyndon Neri, Rossana Hu.
Senior Associate-in-charge.- Christine Chang.
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Design team
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Sela Lim, Bella Lin, Kevin Chim, Alexander Goh, Haiou Xin, July Huang.
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Collaborators
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Local Architect.- K2LD.
LDI.- K2LD.
Structural Engineering.- JS Tan Consultants Pte Ltd.
MEP Engineering.- Elead Associates Pte Ltd.
Lighting.- P5 Pte Ltd & Light Basic Studio Pte Ltd.
Landscape.- Nyee Phoe Flower Garden Pte Ltd.
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Contractors
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General Contractor.- Space Scope Pte Ltd.
Steel Construction.- Luen Soon Iron Works.
Doors and windows.- Lital Materials & Contracts Engineers Pte Ltd.
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Dates
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2021.
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Location
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Singapore.
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Materials / Products and brands
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1. Architecture – Materials.- Site-cast concrete, Aluminum, Raw steel, Clear glass, Aggregate concrete, Gravels, Tile.
2. Architecture – Fixtures & Fittings, Equipment, Sockets & Switches.- Sanitary - Zuchetti, Sink&Washlet - Duravit, Sockets&Switches - Jung.
3. Decorative Lighting, Specified.- Viabizzuno, Flos, Neri&Hu Bai Chandelier III, Kreon.
4. Interiors – Materials.- Wood, Tile, Cement plaster, Clear glass, stainless steel, Clear glass, Paint, Metal.
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Photography
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Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, founded in 2006 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office is an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. The practice’s burgeoning global portfolio includes commissions ranging from master planning and architecture to interior design, installation, furniture, product, branding and graphic works. Currently working on projects in many countries, Neri&Hu is composed of multi-cultural staff who speak over 30 different languages.  The team's diversity reinforces a core vision for the practice: to respond to a global worldview, incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a new architectural paradigm.

Neri&Hu’s location is purposeful. With Shanghai considered a new global frontier, Neri&Hu is in the immediate center of this contemporary chaos. The city’s cultural, urban, and historic contexts function as a point of departure for design inquiries that span across a wide spectrum of scales. Furthermore, Neri&Hu has expanded the conventional boundaries of practice to include complementary disciplines. A critical probing into the specificities of program, site, function, and history is essential to the creation of rigorous work. Based on research, Neri&Hu anchors its ethos on the dynamic interaction of experience, detail, material, form, and light rather than conforming to a formulaic style.

Lyndon Neri, Honorary FAIA, co-founded Neri&Hu Design and Research Office with Rossana Hu in 2006, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai. Neri received his Master of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design and his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Alongside his design practice, Neri has been deeply committed to architectural education and has taught and lectured at numerous universities. He was appointed as Visiting Faculty at Princeton University School of Architecture for the spring semesters of 2024 and 2025. Neri was appointed the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, the Design Critic in 2023 and the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture in 2019 and 2021 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 2022 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018 at the Yale School of Architecture. Neri co-authored and edited Persistence of Vision: Shanghai Architects in Dialogue, published by MCCM Creations in 2007. In 2017, his first monograph, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, was published by Park Books. In 2021, the second monograph, Thresholds: Space, Time and Practice, was published by Thames & Hudson, and the Chinese edition was translated and published in 2023 by Guangxi Normal University Press. Neri was elevated to Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 2025.

Rossana Hu co-founded Neri&Hu Design and Research Office with Lyndon Neri in 2006, an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai. Hu received her Master of Architecture and Urban Planning at Princeton University and her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, with a minor in music.

Alongside her design practice, Hu has been deeply committed to architectural education and has taught and lectured at numerous universities. Hu was appointed the Howard Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, the Design Critic in 2023 and the John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture in 2019 and 2021 at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 2022 and Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018 at the Yale School of Architecture. Hu was appointed as Chair of the Department of Architecture at Tongji University in 2021 and Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, effective spring semester 2024.

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Published on: April 9, 2022
Cite:
metalocus, CARLOS GONZÁLEZ
"Living under the same roof means living together. The House of Remembrance by Neri&Hu" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/living-under-same-roof-means-living-together-house-remembrance-nerihu> ISSN 1139-6415
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