Project Feature | Plinth House by Type0 Architects
Set along the seafront edge of Sentosa Cove, Plinth House is conceived as a quiet retreat—where architecture, landscape, and materiality come together in calm harmony. Elevated above a crafted stone plinth, the home balances openness with privacy, framing views of the coast while creating a sanctuary within.
In this issue, we sat down with Pan Yi Cheng, the Principal Architect, to explore his design thinking behind the project—how the interplay of mass engineered timber, its warm tones, and our textured stone surfaces helped craft a sensorial living experience rooted in nature.
Photography by @jovian.lim
Shou Sugi House
In the basement, the space is transformed into a dedicated home theatre. The room is lined with customised indigo blue-stained birch veneered panels arranged within a precise grid. Within this system, the geometry is subtly manipulated: each panel is tilted slightly while remaining planar, allowing concealed speakers to be integrated behind the surface. The calibrated angles also form narrow slits between panels that introduce indirect lighting both upwards and downwards. Beyond its visual expression, the tilting of the acoustic panels allows the surfaces to both absorb and disperse sound, creating a carefully balanced acoustic environment. The result is a spatial field of controlled reflections, light and sound that together produce an immersive cinematic experience.
.sg/housing/shousugihouse
Photography: @fin.barr
#type0architecture #singaporearchitecture #hometheater #acousticpanels #digitalfabrication
Within the master suite, a double-volume bedroom faces the waterway, framing expansive views across the landscape. The height of the space allows morning light to enter deeply into the room, gradually illuminating the mineral surfaces and timber finishes. A sculptural spiral stair rises within this volume, connecting the bedroom to a private lounge located within the attic above. The stair forms a continuous curved element within the otherwise disciplined geometry of the house, establishing a vertical spatial sequence between rest, retreat, and outlook.
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Photography: @fin.barr
#Type0Architecture #ShouSugiHouse #SingaporeArchitecturec #LuxuryHomeDesign SentosaCove HomeRenovationSG BungalowDesign
The tonal language of the exterior establishes the foundation for the interior spaces. Inside, the house adopts a restrained and largely monochromatic palette composed of dark oak and champaca, pale grigio olivo mineral limestone and muted blue st blaise stone. Structural elements, cabinetry, and openings are carefully aligned so that lines extend continuously across rooms with quiet precision.
Large expanses of glazing open the interior to the surrounding water and landscape. Deep overhangs and horizontal louvers temper the tropical sun, allowing daylight to enter in a controlled manner while casting shifting linear shadows across the interior surfaces.
.sg/housing/shousugihouse
Photography: @fin.barr
#Type0Architecture #ShouSugiHouse #SingaporeArchitecturec #LuxuryHomeDesign #SentosaCove HomeRenovationSG BungalowDesign InteriorDesignSingapore DreamHome ArchitectureSingapore
Shou Sugi House — Sentosa Cove
At Shou Sugi House, a Sentosa Cove waterfront residence, we transformed an ageing property by stripping it back to its bones and rebuilding its identity around a single idea: charred timber.
Inspired by the Japanese shou sugi ban tradition, charred Accoya timber wraps the entire façade. Expressed as vertical and horizontal panels woven into a disciplined framework, the cladding establishes a clear rhythm across the façade while allowing windows and terraces to sit deeply recessed within the structural order.
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Photography: @fin.barr
#Type0Architecture #ShouSugiHouse #SingaporeArchitecture #LuxuryHomeDesign #SentosaCove #HomeRenovationSG #BungalowDesign #InteriorDesignSingapore #DreamHome #ArchitectureSingapore
Stone holds the earth. Timber reaches for the horizon.
We are proud to introduce the Plinth House — Singapore’s first Mass Engineered Timber residence, completed on a seafront site in Sentosa Cove.
The house is conceived as two distinct layers: a stone plinth below, grounded and protective; a timber pavilion above, open to the sea and sky. The conventional hierarchy of the seafront home is deliberately inverted — privacy is found at ground level, and openness is displaced upward, where height naturally affords distance from the public edge. Two floors of CLT and glulam structure were prefabricated and assembled on site in seven weeks.
The full story, coming soon.
Photography by @jovian.lim
#PlinthHouse #Type0Architecture #MassEngineeredTimber #SingaporeArchitecture #TimberArchitecture
As the year comes to a close, the TYPE0 and PRODUCE team wishes all our partners, clients, and friends a very happy New Year.
We’re deeply grateful to everyone who has given us the opportunity to do meaningful work this past year, and we’re excited for what 2026 has in store.
🍻
House of Passing Light
A new Accoya timber trellis wraps the façade, tying the various elements together. It filters daylight, moderates solar exposure, and forms awnings over the entrance, balcony, and terraces. At the front, a new balcony is lowered beneath the crown of an existing roadside tree, borrowing its shade and making it the primary outlook from the master bedroom.
Design Team members:
1) Pan Yi Cheng
2) Daniel Chia
3) Guo Xiu Jin
4) Liao Chien-I
📸: @fin.barr
#timberfacade #sghome #singaporearchitecture #landedhouse #Architecture singaporearchitect sgbuildings
House of Passing Light
The design treats light as a primary building material. The triple-volume void anchors the home as an apparatus for capturing diurnal shifts and translating them into a spatial narrative. As the sun moves, the void brightens, compresses, softens, and fades with passing of light through the day.
Its east-facing façade is replaced with 6-metre-high frameless glass panes, while the southern side opens toward an elevated garden and roof terrace.
A new staircase is reorganised as a backdrop to the atrium, reinforcing the clarity of the section. Clad in matte stainless steel, it reflects soft gradients of daylight as one moves through the space. Ascending or descending the stair reveals subtle environmental shifts, making time and light directly perceptible through circulation.
Design Team members:
1) Pan Yi Cheng
2) Daniel Chia
3) Guo Xiu Jin
4) Liao Chien-I
📸: @fin.barr
#timberfacade #sghome #singaporearchitecture #landedhouse #Architecture singaporearchitect sgbuildings
