Customer-made: A home design to suit all tastes

Customer-made: A home design to suit all tastes

Maria Endah Hulupi, Contributor, Jakarta

The customer is always right, right?

True, but translating a home owner's wishes without breaking a
set of design principles can be a tough task. Architect Ahmad
Djuhara succeeded nevertheless in creating a clean-cut, modern
three-story house in a housing complex in North Jakarta.

It fully conforms to the wishes of the young couple with
children for a home that reflected their taste, lifestyle as well
as meeting their growing family's needs -- boasting a modern
atmosphere with a stimulating space experience, colors as well as
"interesting" displays of materials -- while staying true to
Djuhara's own design objectives.

Djuhara said he was influenced by the works of several foreign
and local architects in making design solutions.

"I think it's part of the learning process," said the winner
of the Association of Indonesian Architects' competition to
develop the Wayang Museum in Kota, West Jakarta.

The house stands on a plot of land that was raised about 70
centimeters higher than the street level.

"The plot was elevated because the lower floor, which was
initially a semibasement, also accommodates the servant's
quarters and according to feng shui, a living quarter should not
be lower than the street level," Djuhara explained, referring to
the Chinese architectural principles.

To provide balance for its elevated appearance, the architect
designed a front staircase with a rich-toned wooden shield made
of bars and arranged horizontally. The front staircase is also
the main entrance to the house's ground floor.

Individual spaces in the interior were created with an aim to
stimulatingly the surrounding area through the use of different
heights, and a winding corridor connecting one room to another
gives an extensive impression to the house.

One of the architect's ambitions was to provide all rooms with
natural light during the day and good air circulation.

The ground floor accommodates a dining room, a living room, a
kitchen and a guest bedroom. The living room is reduced to a
functional seating area with plenty of space sensation.

"In my opinion, a living room slowly loses its importance but
it is included because the owners, though knowing that they would
not receive guests every day, insisted on having it."

The staircase leading to the upper floor, Djuhara said, was
designed to balance the floor to floor height. As a result, the
staircase speaks of grandness, which the owners wished to express
in that area.

The house owners worked closely with him in choosing and
buying the materials and furniture for the home.

The upper floor is a private area and colors are the
predominant features here. The area is uniquely designed to
represent character of each family member through the selection
of colors, seen in the master bedroom, children's bedrooms and
the playroom, which could also be converted to another children's
room in the future.

"I use different colors, and each represents a member of the
family. For me, this is important because the children are also
my clients and I want to respect their individuality by making
sure that their existence is present in every path they take
inside the house," said Djuhara.

The children was asked to individually pick their own colors
from his color chart.

There is a wall in the corridor which was transformed into a
gallery where drawings created by the owners' eldest child are
displayed. A section of the wall near the staircase is painted
blue, representing the parents' choice of color.

The master bedroom was created with a straightforward, modern
interior. Parquet flooring is used because it is elegant and
comfortable for the skin and it is arranged into a zipper-like
motif. The room has five clean-cut door panels, linking it to the
bathroom and a walk-in-closet.

The modern house is also adorned with a tropical garden with
frangipani and bamboo among the dominant plants. A small bed in
the exterior is allocated for yellow bamboo trees, offering a
pleasing contrast to the deep brown wooden screen that cases the
entrance.

"To Chinese people, a bamboo tree helps protect the house and
those living in it against bad luck," the architect said.