The Bamboo Curtain House by Eco-id Architects

Interior Architecture and Design

A curtain of bamboo creates a beautiful natural screen that contrasts perfectly against the raw off-form concrete structure of this Modernist home in tropical Singapore. Recently completed, the house stands elevated on a hillside neighbourhood of single-storey houses on the fringe of MacRitchie Forest Reserve.

The screen comprises two layers of mature hollow bamboo sections specially ordered from a Javanese bamboo forest. Each section of 150mm in diameter were cut to length, cleaned and left in its natural finish. Suspended with a wire clip to a hanging bar, the bamboo sways in the slightest breeze and gently collides much like a giant wind chime, making the house both visually and aurally responsive to the weather. They can be hand adjusted to create a selected view or a privacy screen. The sound of the bamboo curtain varies through the day, a low timbre registers of the passage of the prevailing morning and evening breezes.

In practical terms the bamboo curtain is a perfect climactic screen that effectively dispels the heat of Singapore’s tropical sun from penetrating the house. During heavy rainstorms, common during the monsoon season, the screen also reduces horizontal driving rain. The increasing din of the colliding bamboo curtain reminds its occupants to the on- set of a rainstorm and hence to close doors and windows.

The Bamboo Curtain House is owned and designed by Sim Boon Yang of the award-winning eco.id Architects based in Singapore. Following a minimalist principle of rational simplicity, he designed the house as a box, organised into four equal bays that accommodated the lifestyle of his family of five.

Images © Sim Boon Yang