Tropical Modernism

In this three-storey inter-terrace belonging to a family of four, designer Ethan Lin of TE-EL sought to create a cosy nest that marries the disparate tastes of its owners.

- AARON DE SILVA

Opposites attract, they say. The owners of this house, a married couple in their 30s with two young children, are as different as night and day. While the husband, Tzi Yang, is masculine, extroverted, and boisterous, the wife, Jill, is cool, calm, and composed, with a swan-like elegance.

Their tastes, too, differ. He shares that Tzi Yang's ideal dwelling is a brutalist concrete bunker, whereas Jill has a penchant for all things sophisticated. This is her natural instinct, honed over the years by exposure to the rich artistic and cultural scenes in Beijing and Hong Kong, where the couple lived for a while.

You'd think that designing a home that marries both sets of inclinations would be challenging. And you'd be right. But Ethan Lin, principal of design studio TE-EL, whom the couple "stalked on Instagram", took it under his wing, delivering a family nest that exceeded expectations.

"(Ethan) really managed to marry our aesthetic senses," says Tzi Yang, 38, an M&A lawyer. "I was leaning a bit more to the brutalist side of things.

But he managed to find some middle ground. Even though (the design is) elegant and the colours were not as true to my initial instincts, what I really like about it is that it's very monolithic, which appealed to me very much."

FUNCTIONAL ADJUSTMENTS

Not that any of these qualities can be appreciated by a bystander. The interterrace unit, located in the northeast of Singapore, was constructed as a row of identical terrace houses with monotonous facades. The couple purchased the three-storey, 3,500 sq ft property in 2015 before relocating to Beijing and subsequently Hong Kong in 2018. It was rented out to a family in the interim period. They returned to Singapore in 2021 to be closer to their families.