In the realm of retail design, the convergence of cultural influences and design philosophies often yields remarkable results. Such is the case with Motherhouse's upcoming outlet at Singapore Changi Airport, where a captivating narrative of artisan craftsmanship and Japanese design sensibilities is set to unfold.

Rooted in the ethos of Motherhouse is a profound appreciation for the craftsmanship of local artisans in developing countries. This ethos, coupled with an infusion of Japanese design principles, serves as the driving force behind the outlet's design concept. Drawing inspiration from the Japanese concept of "mono-zukuri" – the art of creating through collaboration and respect for natural materials – the design narrative promises to be a celebration of cultural exchange and creative synergy.

In the pursuit of a tranquil yet functional home, a young family with two children is embracing Scandinavian minimalism, drawing inspiration from the biophilic design principles inherent in the existing Parc Rivera Condominium development. Nestled on a high floor, the apartment offers a wide frontage overlooking the Pandan Reservoir, a breathtaking canvas that guides the design narrative.

Neutral tones and natural materials converge to create a serene ambiance, seamlessly merging with the biophilic elements of Parc Rivera. Distinct zones are carved out to capture the expansive reservoir views, offering both communal spaces for family gatherings and private retreats for moments of solitude.

Sleek yet comfortable furniture, in tune with the Scandi-Minimalist theme, complements the biophilic essence. Child-friendly elements and an abundance of greenery enhance the connection to nature, making the home an organic extension of its surroundings.

Personalized accents, including curated artwork, echo the reservoir's tranquility, enriching the space with character. This transformative journey not only embraces timeless design principles but also harmonizes with the vibrant energy of the Pandan Reservoir, creating a biophilic haven where Scandinavian simplicity meets the natural symphony of the surroundings.

Design Concept: “Harmonious Tranquility”

In crafting a design concept for the young couple with a young child, we propose “Harmonious Tranquility.” This concept blends the serene simplicity of minimalist dark tones with the graceful imperfection of wabi-sabi, all while ensuring a child-safe, organic design that incorporates ample storage space.

Color Palette: The primary color scheme revolves around deep, minimalist dark tones, including rich charcoal wood, slate gray, and soft oat colour. These shades create a calm and soothing atmosphere while embracing wabi-sabi’s appreciation for the beauty of natural imperfections.

Furniture and Layout: To align with the minimalist philosophy, we opt for clean-lined, multifunctional furniture. A spacious settee bench near offers a cozy reading nook and serves as a dining area for the family. The conceal cabinet within the TV feature wall is designed to blend seamlessly into the room, enhancing the uncluttered aesthetic.

Child-Safe Features: All furniture and fixtures prioritize safety, with soft, rounded edges and corners. Childproof latches are discreetly incorporated into cabinet doors. Low-profile furniture ensures easy visibility and supervision of the child, promoting a secure environment.

Abundance of Storage: Storage is cleverly integrated throughout the design. In the kitchen, sleek, handle-less cabinets and deep drawers offer ample space, while the TV feature wall conceals additional storage. The settee bench includes hidden compartments for toys and children’s items, ensuring a clutter-free living area.

Lighting: Soft, warm lighting, with fixtures that echo the organic design, enhances the cozy ambiance. Dimmable options allow for flexible moods, from bright and playful to soft and calming.

“Hamonious Tranquility” blends the elegance of minimalist dark tones with the authentic, imperfect beauty of wabi-sabi, while providing a safe and nurturing environment for the young family. This design concept celebrates the elegance of simplicity, the allure of imperfection, and the joy of creating a harmonious home for all.

Design Concept: Timeless-Japandi

In this design concept, we aim to create a serene and functional living space for a young couple with a baby in their HDB BTO 4-Room apartment. Drawing inspiration from the timeless Japandi style with a touch of minimalism, this design will foster a sense of synergy between aesthetics and practicality.

1. Japandi-Minimalist Fusion: The design merges the simplicity of minimalism with the warm, natural elements of Japandi. This fusion emphasizes functionality, space optimization, and the use of natural materials.

2. Open Kitchen: The removal of the kitchen wall creates a sense of spaciousness and encourages family togetherness. It allows natural light to flow freely throughout the apartment.

3. Kitchen Transformation: The kitchen layout is reorganized for efficiency and aesthetics. Unsightly piping is concealed and utilized as clever storage spaces, maintaining a clutter-free environment.

4. Tile Poetry: Design tiles are strategically incorporated to introduce subtle contrasts. Light, nature-inspired patterns adorn the living and dining area, while fluted, intricate tiles become a feature in the kitchen.

5. Neutral Elegance: A soothing color palette of soft earthy tones, whites, and grays provides a serene backdrop, allowing furniture and artwork to shine.

6. Luminous Elegance: Adequate lighting, both natural and artificial, will be thoughtfully designed to set the mood and maximize the sense of space.

This design concept narrates a story of synergy, versatility, and elegance. It aims to create a serene and functional home for the young family, where aesthetics and practicality coexist seamlessly, fostering a sense of togetherness and tranquility.

The Executive Maisonette in Hougang is the combination of both Chinese oriental and modern elements, showcasing the client’s outlook on making sure the home reflects the best of both cultures.

The home is designed to reflect comfort without compromising on aesthetics. The wall art inspired by the 山水画 or sansui-ga, a traditional Chinese form of landscape painting, stretches across the dining space to the spiral staircase, widening the living space.

As the second level is the family’s space to bond and connect, the addition of windows on both sides of the wall allows free flow of air and light into the space.

Komi Crystals, a boutique designer jeweler started off by selling on IG livestream and have since amassed tens and thousands of customers and followers. As a social commerce company, Komi Crystals believe that the best way to engage customers is through an O2O strategy, also known as Online to Offline where customers can both view their livestreams and visit their retail store to feel the jewelry themselves.

With 90% of their customers being young females, our team at Craffee proposed a dreamy pink interior with lots of curvatures to soften the space. Together with the owners, Craffee helped to customize a 1.5m floral pendant that is designed to draw attention to the central island counter, where the latest jewelry collection is housed.

Additionally, this retail space will soon feature a workshop room where Komi will teach jewelry making to their loyal customers, allowing them to customize their own jewelry.

Collection of Hand Sketches During our Client Presentations.

“I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster and leaves less room for lies.” - Le Corbusier

Singapore Shophouses is a prevalent building type in Singapore’s architectural and built heritage. These buildings are built in contiguous blocks with common structural party walls with a sheltered ‘five foot’ pedestrian way at the front.

When we were invited to reimagine the interiors of a shophouse along Serangoon Road, our proposal was for a collision of the past and present - bring back Serangoon Road as “the road leading across the island” and what we see today as a vibrant tourist attraction - to create a gift shop for the local creatives, curating from an endless array of workshops and craftsmen across Singapore and connecting the creative community through crafts, conversations, food and coffee.

As a contribution to the shophouse, we designed a vertical and horizontal undulating display shelf that allows the products to be viewed from any angle - a perfect square turns into a triangle as one walks along the shelf.

This 5-level terrace situated in Lorong Marzuki is another project under BrandNewLand Group’s canopy collection and jointly designed by Mark12 Architects. Nicknamed “Zen”, our client has asked us to interpret a Japanese Zen interiors for this project.

We approach the design by taking inspiration from the Sanskrit word for Zen, dhyana, which means ‘quiet contemplation’ and includes design concepts of tokonoma, karesansui and zazen to craft a living space where future owners can pursue - Simple Living. Zen Style.

Tokonoma - in the old days, Japanese homes featured an alcove called a tokonoma where a hanging scroll would be placed in it. Whether it held a painting or calligraphy, people could reflect on it whenever they were at home. In a modern twist, we utilize a large calligraphy artwork to bring to life the neutral shades of a zen interior; placing it at the centre of the living and dining hall.

Karesansui - the Japanese rock garden or "dry landscape" garden, often called a zen garden, creates a miniature stylized landscape through carefully composed arrangements of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water. Instead of atypical planter, we incorporate zen garden in the the sky terrace; alfresco dining and social gatherings zen style.

Zazen - in Zen training, zazen is of utmost importance because the act of thinking derives from the concept of sitting quietly. We interpret this concept with the design of a meditation/yoga room at the attic level where the balcony opens up to a tea ‘room’ overlooking the landed enclave.

Developed by BrandNewLand Group in collaboration with CIAP Architects, this 4-level terrace at Bowmont Gardens features a unique façade that reduces directly sun exposure but still allow ample daylight into the house.

To exemplify its green design, we were asked to imagine an interior design that brings in Zen principles and philosophy. We believe a Zen-like design is all about creating a living space of peace, relaxation and inner sanctuary from the stresses and strains of life in the outside world.

Natural materials of wood and stone coupled with minimalist furnitures, create texture, interest and warmth in a wonderfully subtle way.

Within this simplicity, a fully handcrafted timber panels of varying thickness cover the floor to celling to create a statement feature in the living hall.

COVID-19 put everyone at home on a global scale. Suddenly, home becomes a place of shelter, an office for work and a place for vacation. When we were invited to design the interiors of a 4-storey residential property in central Singapore, we proposed to redefine the programmatic requirements of a traditional residential home.

Instead of viewing the property in its entirety and fitting “functional spaces” into it, we defined each storey as a distinct “destination” - each storey represents a different experience for the homeowners. For the ground level: a holiday home experience for family and friends. The attic floor: a man-cave and a she-shed that comes with its own kitchen.

Temasek-backed Growthwell Foods has invited us to design their new corporate office in Senoko where it also houses the Asia’s first high-tech plant protein manufacturing plant.

With a floorspace of 1,100sqft, workable ceiling of 3.6ft and Feng Shui requirements, we have chosen a simple, biophilic-focus colour palette to improve the perception of space within the office.

Careful and impactful use of their corporate colour and identity ensure staff and guests alike be inspired by their purpose-driven mission.

Taking inspiration from nature, we implemented biophilic principles into our design concept for this HBD located in Toa Payoh.

Spaciousness is a key part of the home. The open space concept of the wall allows better flow between different spaces together with natural lighting. Rather than inorganic shapes, we embraced curves when it came to the furniture, from round coffee tables to curved kitchen islands. Stone and wood materials also take center stage in the home, mainly in the kitchen top, shelving and cabinetry.

Design Proposal for The Lincoln Modern Penthouse

Basement bar and private cinema at Seah Street. A touch of the microgroove and vinyl era.

This small condominium unit in Mountbatten Road is a space where modern luxury meets Victorian inspiration.

As it is in an enclosed area, we made sure to keep in mind the size of the 2-bedroom condominium unit before coming up with design concepts. For the living and dining hall, we proposed to hack down the wall facing the dining area to give a wider visual for the young parents on their 4- to 5-year-old children.

We proposed adding chrome gold accessories such as cabinet door knobs, kitchen water taps and dining hall pendant lights. Dark tones were used as accents as well to achieve a luxurious contrast with the overall white theme of the unit.

In the dining area, we kept in mind the owner’s wish for a standing bar counter and proposed several combinations of custom-built dining tables. We also included a counter cabinet for storage of personal wine and alcohol collections.

To tie together the unit’s Victorian theme, we proposed using a white marble top for the dining table together with the wall paneling.

Craffee’s first landed project on Mangis Road was focused on enhancing the luxurious accents of the house, using dark brown oak and dark grey grain marble for the main materials.

We made the high ceiling in the living space a focal point, filling it with a wood grain laminate all the way to the top and also the dining hall and covered the rest of the wall with travertino cement. Light grey linear sofas and mid-century modern coffee tables were also chosen to give contrast to the large space.

For the TV area, we used back oak wood together with a glossy grey marble wall to enhance the overall living space. Mid warm grey was added to create a modern contrast. To compliment the living space further, we also added a fine bronze metal strip to one of the wooden frames.