akiHAUS have successfully made the Shortlist for the International Design & Architecture Awards 2014. Their project ‘Sentosa Cove’ has been Shortlisted for the Asia-Pacific Living Space Award. With a beautiful ocean view, the Client’s key concern naturally is how this view can be best incorporated into the apartment. The Client also expressed their preference for natural materials and warm hues, but with a catch – the Client’s geologist background meant that any stone used must have little, if any at all, metal content to avoid radiation.

Bearing the above in mind, we created a “Portal” concept in the Living space where the ocean view is, replacing the existing “cold” white marble floor and plaster ceiling with “warm” teak that extends from the interior out to the external balcony, framing the stunning ocean view and drawing that same view back into the apartment in one broad stroke. Complementing the warm teak is a cool earth-toned marble wall (carefully selected with no metal content), its layout custom-designed to create a dynamic yet calm feature on the vertical planes in the Living space.

Last on the Client’s list was their liking for Japanese aesthetics. We reinterpreted this with modern oriental detailing to the apartment, in addition to obvious Japanese references, to better address the Client’s Chinese roots. The same “Portal” concept was applied to the rooms with a Japanese “floor-based” usage of space, cladding the wall, floor and ceiling planes in oak panels to create a cool calming “zen-like” contrast to the warm teak flooring used throughout the apartment. Each “Portal” is applied differently in every room, yet similar in concept to create a unifying identity to the whole apartment. The use of the “Portal” concept to not just frame the beautiful view of the ocean but to create a unifying identity in the whole apartment.