Namly House

GOY Architects extends a 1950s Singapore bungalow around a garden courtyard.

The owners of Namly House needed more room for a household that includes three adult children. Their 1950s bungalow in Singapore’s Bukit Timah neighborhood held years of family memories, along with architectural details they wanted to preserve. GOY Architects renovated and extended the house, retaining its single-story scale and restoring the colorful mosaic floors, patterned metal window grilles, and varied plaster finishes. These features also helped determine the materials and geometry of the addition, giving the architects a starting point rooted in the family’s attachment to their home.

A new courtyard sits between the original building and the extension, bringing daylight, air, and greenery into the center of the plan. Rooms open directly onto the garden through large glazed doors, with views across the planting to the interiors opposite. Pale paving traces the edge of pebble beds filled with dense foliage and small trees. Above, red-tiled roofs and deep eaves keep the garden closely framed. From the original living area, the view extends through this planted space into a second sitting room beyond.

The retained window grilles supplied a reference for the new brick screens. GOY Architects translated their open geometry into pale masonry, leaving gaps that provide privacy while allowing air to circulate. Seen through the older metalwork, the perforated walls create a second layer of pattern across the courtyard. Cement and sand tiles complete the extension’s material palette. The relationship between the two parts of the house is particularly clear here: slender, dark metal lines in the foreground, deeper openings and softly textured brick behind them.

Inside, broad openings with rounded corners connect the living and dining areas. Wooden shelves and full-height cupboards fit against pale walls, while low cabinetry runs beneath the windows. Books, ceramics, and paintings occupy these spaces above the finely patterned floors, whose small circles introduce muted shades of blue, cream, and terracotta. The rounded openings leave generous views between rooms, allowing the mosaics to remain a continuous presence underfoot. At the courtyard threshold, those tiled circles meet another kind of pattern: leaf impressions in the paving, with fine veins and stems visible beside the garden.

Photography by Khoo Guo Jie.