Project: R+J House
Architects: DP+HS Architects
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
Area: 12,916 sf
Year: 2021
Photographs by: Don Pieto
R+J House by DP+HS Architects
In a Jakarta gated community, a unique house seamlessly integrates contemporary art for a young family. The raumplan concept optimizes space, emphasizing vertical and horizontal flow around a central void. Inspired by atrium spaces, the design offers a 360-degree view of art, with a central staircase enhancing the experience. The entry unfolds into a dynamic journey through art, architecture, and nature, seamlessly connecting indoor and outdoor spaces.
Situated on the far end corner of the gated community housing area in Jakarta, the site was unique compared to the other sites within the same area. It was surrounded by a green open area, giving the site a very natural view outside, with a lot of trees and a relatively calm corner of the housing complex. The brief of the project is to make space for a young family, with a lot of possibilities to place specific kinds of objects around the house because of the owners’ interest in distinctive contemporary art objects. The initial idea is to take this notable interest seriously to be incorporated into the overall spaces and architecture.
With limited area to work with, combined with the museum-like experience wanted to achieve throughout the house, the strategy is to adopt a raumplan, which offers the possibility of moving flawlessly between spaces and still allows immense spatial experiences. The sequence between rooms flows naturally and forms a close loop of intertwined areas while still offering the possibility of moving with greater freedom inside the unified volume of the house. The idea is to create an interlocking void that extends the sense of space vertically to help balance the major placement of art objects on a horizontal eye-plane at each corner of rooms.
Inspired by traditional atrium (atria) space, which gives building emphasis on the feeling of space and light, the primary strategy is to create a large space in the middle of the house, allowing occupants to enjoy a private space with monumental experience and a clear view throughout the house. Thus, each plane and level of the house is understood as a continuum, an inseparable space where art objects are randomly displayed, hoping to be discovered as people move within the spaces. This notion of peoples’ movements within the spaces is also taken quite literally, translated into the staircase design, which is placed at the very center of the atrium space, which serves as the central open core of the house. It allows the movement of the eyes and the body to the 360-degree view of the spaces, setting up the stage of sensation from enjoying art, architecture, and nature to be experienced as the body moves within the spaces.
The procession entering the house is a series of experiences that unfolds itself, ascending a narrow flight of stairs, with the main door placed facing the side rather than traditionally facing the front, with the door itself somewhat camouflaged and subdued, before finally encountering the huge, open core of the house, spanning all the way to the skylight vertically, and horizontally to the 15 meters wide-free of columns-opening to the swimming pool on the side of the house, framing the entire outdoor view to the green open area, and blurring the boundaries between indoor and outdoor areas, allowing outdoor space to be a part of the indoor space.
