A Brutalist bachelor pad with warm touches

Home Type: 3-room HDB flat

Floor Area: 700sqft

Text by Janice Seow

Brutalism, characterised by the use of concrete, raw industrial materials, and monolithic, rigid shapes, might seem better suited to interiors of a grander scale than a modest three-room flat. However, MONOCOT has elegantly conveyed its core elements for a client with an affinity for concrete.

“The client lives alone and is really into sports, wellness and music. He also enjoys collecting designer furniture. For his new home, he wanted to demolish the existing two bedrooms and create a completely open space to live and to entertain,” shares Mikael Teh, founder of MONOCOT, who worked on this project with his colleague Dan Chan. “He is a big fan of concrete and is very open to exploring textures and designs that challenge the norm,” the architectural designer continues.

The flat’s standard three-room layout has been completely redone in an open plan. Kitchen and living/dining/resting are visually defined and separated by different flooring treatments of cement screed and engineered oak respectively. Walls and ceilings are clad in microcement, and cast off site fair faced concrete grace the sleeping area. Cool stainless steel finds its way onto the kitchen countertops and even the main door and threshold.

To soften the stark brutalist scheme, the designers have judiciously included elements of wood and deep browns around the unit – on floors, carpentry, pantry backsplash, kitchen tiling and furniture – that do a remarkable job of warming up the space.

The kitchen and dining are designed for entertaining, and given that the client does not often watch television, there is no need for a living area. Instead, the designers have created a little lounge area, furnished simply with a single Fritz Hansen PK Lounge Chair that takes up minimal space and makes the flat feel more spacious. And since the homeowner lives alone, a simple screen divider that gives semi-privacy to the rest area suffices.

An open pathway leads from the public spaces to the bathroom amenities, which are located behind the sleeping zone. Here, Mikael and Dan have designed a large and open shower room that’s strikingly cladded in beautiful, cracked tiles, and inserted a separate and private WC and vanity adjacent to it.

Overall, the stripped down aesthetic brings forth a look that is essential and honest. It’s simple without being spartan, underscores the innate beauty of materials, and is a noteworthy transformation of a once modest HDB flat into a brutalist-inspired home.