Ass. 2 | Thoughts on Pencil Office

Erik L’heureux is a Singapore based American Architect working on various projects in Singapore. His talk are mainly focus on his study on Tropical Climate and it’s influences towards Southeast Asia. To support his study, he explain his ideas on, as titled, “Hot and Wet”. He respond his finding with rather interesting exploration on architectural form and, as he mentioned, “atmosphere” in the region. His work introduced in the talk included “Stereoscopic Houses”, “A simple brick interior” and “A simple factory building”. In fact, his project are mainly surrounded on temperature, urban density, solar performance, and dynamic atmosphere in Singapore.

He introduce the idea of “Hot and Wet” through the development of Air-conditioning in Singapore. For such a city state of Singapore without any natural resources, Singapore former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has quote that, Air-conditioning are the greatest invention for Singapore. As a result, Air-conditioning has given Singapore a chance to attract foreign investor, by simply, build more high rise air-conditioned office building. Apart from that, air-conditioning too improve public efficiency from all aspect.

Stereoscopic House. © Pencil Office

At the next section of his talk, he begin to explain his project, firstly “Stereoscopic House”. Project Site sandwiched between golf court and sea view. This project can be seen as, highly inspired from traditional Malay House, from architectural forms, features and even the ornament. Main part of building are elevated, the facades are retractable, windows panels are ornamented with “modern design”. Dramatic interior are shaped by different form of reinforced concrete. The dramatic atmosphere in interior spaces are created by diffused and reflected through specially design of screens. I think this is still his early attempt on “Hot and Wet” climate as the passive design strategies are still similar to a traditional Malay house, innovative ideas are yet to explore from there. Apart from innovation, this project can be a benchmark as a passive design strategies to get rid of air-conditioning.

A simple brick interior. © Pencil Office

Vertical-Horizontal No.1 by Bridget Riley. © Pencil Office

The third project “A simple brick interior” is the most successful attempt of responding his study on tropical architecture. Ventilation of the interior space are simply improved through a rather interesting of bricklaying that created a perforated screen. Besides, the bricklaying creates the pleasant dramatic interior space that surprise customer who came to have their dining. The wall not only explored wall as a ventilation element, but also as a light structural components and even optical illusions. Beside ventilation, the building works perfectly on blending in with historic and preserved colonial building. From both examples above, we can obviously see that, architect Erik L’Heureux has a huge influences from Optical Illusion Artist Bridget Riley. He tend to search solutions from pattern of optical illusions, especially from Bridget Ridley’s Artwork, which is exceptional. Although, his translation of ideas from optical illusion are literal but it’s a good sign to see how architect’s seek inspiration from art. As art are evidence of people’s thought.

A simple factory building. © Pencil Office

I find his fourth experiment “A simple factory building” unconvincing as it looks rather expensive for such a simple project. Highly possible that he design from a elevation level instead of interior space. The facade are too complex for a simple solution. Furthermore, behind the geometrical sun shading devices are covered with glasses, which makes the design features contradict on his design intention. Besides, this design unexpectedly utilised numerous air-conditioning devices, which leave a question mark on how he applied his ideologies on this building, even he explained. In his explanation on this project, he explained more on the fabrication process instead of design ideas on this building. Besides, the monstrous 4 floored building highly unfit in the two storied factories neighbourhood. In my opinion, this project has emphasis too much on architecture branding instead of the idea itself. It's questionable that this is his most successful project.

From a overall perspective, i think he is still a respectable architect to me as he has an interesting curve of looking for different solutions for tropical architecture. His attempt on seeking inspiration from arts toward climate problem is interesting and has potential to explore further in my opinion. On the other hand, as a responsible designer or architect, i think architectural branding should be minimal and does not overtake the design ideas itself.

-Fin-

references :

Interview with Erik L'Heureux, link : http://www.gridlines.sg/articles/details/41#sthash.a6h0DuWC.dpbs

Wheel Wright Prize Erik L'Heureux, link : http://wheelwrightprize.org/wp-2015-press-release.pdf