iSh article on Frankel House

The latest issue of "iSh" magazine is out in the bookshops. It will be on sale till early-Feb 2006. My article on Frankel House is featured. For some reason, it was not the final version approved by the architect and myself, but an earlier version. I reproduce below the final version that was not published. I visited the house during a thunderstorm, and the photo at left shows it in its wet state...

"The house on Frankel Street is one of the first projects completed by RT+Q architects. It is a house that the firm of RT+Q defines in Modernist language as being “composed of recognizable geometric shapes that fulfill the functional spaces, assembled in a composition of planes and voids while expressing the clarity of structure and materials.” Indeed, history and continuity appears to be the hallmark of the house here. It is history and continuity with the modern tradition we speak of, a tradition launched by the revolutionary French villas of Le Corbusier in the 1920s and influential the world over ever since. It is no secret that RT+Q is a firm with a strong grounding in the works of Corbusier (one of the partners, Rene Tan has given public lectures on the subject) and it is not uncommon to see the master’s principles absorbed and reapplied in the firm’s designs, even if done subconsciously. In the Frankel house, one can trace in particular the primitive outlines of Corbusier’s Pavilion de l’Esprit Nouveau of 1925, except that it is here elaborated upon and finished with care and finesse. Corbusier’s pavilion had been intended as a showcase for the Purist living that he idealised, where the inhabitant is a sort of a universal man, muscular and scholarly, shorn of cultural clutter, living amidst white walls that look out to the greens. Behind them was the idea that these houses would become prototypes for mass production in the same way that Ford was churning out his automobiles. The social agenda was for the common man to be able to own a healthy space to live in, full of light and the breezes.

Much of these qualities can be found in the Frankel house, and some of these, such as natural light and openness, are provided for in abundance. Hence, though the Frankel house is strikingly elegant and photogenic, we nevertheless feel that we are treading on familiar grounds. But Rene Tan is quick to state, “We want to look at architecture at its rightful place as a plastic art, as opposed to decorative, applied art.” And in an earlier published interview with the author, Rene had said, “We like to see if one can restore architecture to the realm of the sculptural, to architecture that is sectionally more fluid and plastic.” This may presumably be read as a comment against the current preoccupation on materiality and surface ornamentation that so alluringly typify the works of Herzog and De Meuron and Rem Koolhaas, whose influences are beginning to be felt in Singapore in increasing ways. But whether he is aware or not, Rene has stated the exact sentiment that Corbusier had when he publicized the Purism movement in art. Actually, Purism was comprised of only two artists: Amédée Ozenfant and Corbusier himself. In their own manifesto, Après le Cubisme, published in 1918, they derided the heirs of Cubism for producing an art that was essentially decorative and ornamental, and inferior to an approach that would give attention to the basic, essential form of objects. Moreover, they believed that fantasy and individuality had no place in modern art. They were advocating their ideal art, and what was applicable to Corbusier the artist was also applicable to Corbusier the architect. While the machine crept into Corbusier’s paintings, so that everyday objects were stripped down and made precise and ‘pure’, the houses Corbusier began to design in the 1920s became streamlined machines to live in. In the 1920s, his designs for either mass housing or one-off villas would have been shockingly minimalist and plain-looking to a public accustomed to gilt.

In present-day Singapore, “plain” would be a relative word. Compared with Corbusier’s villas, the Frankel house would be a marvel of sophistication, and hardly basic at all. On the contrary, the palette of materials and the crafting of joints are exquisite. But view Frankel alongside its more gaudy and ornate neighbours and the same sensation of refreshing classiness that Corbusier’s villas had originally engendered will still come shining through. Architecture has once again been created from the most basic of means; balanced proportions, solid and voids, natural colours, simple rectilinear planes, transparency and shadows, spatial continuum, and a whole range of possibilities that does not rely on ornaments and symbolism. They are what Rene means when he says “plastic” art. The other key word Rene used was “fluid”. This has to do with the manipulation of the walls as a continuous element that loops up to be the roof or folds back to form the floor, a play of folding plates, not quite so evident in the case of Frankel but more so in his forthcoming projects.

Like Corbusier, RT+Q’s design approach is methodical and disciplined. The house is stretched to form a C-shape with the open end facing the east. All rooms are treated with views to the garden courtyard, which is organized around a pool. The breakdown between indoors and outdoors can be practically total, as the double-storey height glass doors are slit open across the breath of the living area wing. These 6m high glass-sliding doors are a technical ‘showcase’; they glide without noise at the slightest effort from the user. The 2 sets of them give the house its pristine character, delineating its prime spaces, defining enclosure or exposure. It reminds one of what Alvar Aalto once said to his client, “For the same reason as I previously wished to turn your garden into an interior, I now wish to make your hall into an ‘open air space’.” Fully opened, the front garden becomes inextricably joined to the central garden, something that the owner of the house found particularly appealing “at night”.

An underlying structure pervades the layout, a co-relation of the parts to the whole, a model of modular coordination. True to form (pun intended), there is nothing arbitrary or fantastic here. For example, the pattern formed by the vertical and horizontal slits on the large blank wall at the front is repeated on the blank wall across the pool at the back. And the triangular form of the master bedroom balcony is inversed in the pool corner below. Rene speaks of the fugue in music (he is an accomplished pianist) and its effects are embodied in his architecture. The geometric discipline is only breached once, by a semi-circular wall of the shower room next to the pool area. A visual highlight of the composition is provided by the gorgeous open spiral-stair that goes up to the roof deck. In doing so, it punctuates a trellised canopy that seems to hover around it. For me, it is the crescendo of what Rene calls a “total musical space”. Whether intended or not, this spiral-stair detail is the iconic emblem of the house in the same way that a tree going through an oculus has been for Corbusier’s 1925 pavilion. So the Frankel house, while not breaking any new grounds, can be seen as RT+Q’s “declaration of intent”; the first of a series to come where he will be reaffirming and expanding on the tenets of Modernism in the pared down, purist way, as well as individualizing them to suit each client and site."

Chup