Located in a rather busy midtown of Jakarta, DeeRoemah is a renovation project of a two-storey house on a 300 m2 irregular shaped site which comprises of 1 master bedroom, 3 child bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, office and storage.

Recognizing the potential of the surprisingly serene neighborhood, an honest design approach was developed for this particular project. The main idea is simply to conserve the existing mass and modify it by utilizing the space under the roof on one side of the L-shaped building as a full story – letting it ‘naturally fit’ the urban setting.

On the first floor, the living room, dining room and kitchen are designed as transparent as possible towards the surrounding outdoor garden in which the existing trees are preserved to blur the inside-outside boundary, whilst each of every bedroom has the view of a small courtyard.

The semi public office on the second floor, which can only be accessed by the outdoor twirled stairs, also adapt the same level of openness as it is surrounded with clear glass looking through the terrace and garden. A see-through wooden plane is positioned diagonally at one end not only as a natural shade but also to accentuate the silhouette of a ‘kampong’ house.

Supporting the concept, the range materials used for this project were simplified. The cement-textured finish dominates the entire house with a hint of raw wood detail on the façade and metal for the outdoor staircase.

The need of railing was decoyed by a gray planter box with dangling vegetation while to compress the actual height of the house, a new contoured garden was reset. The landscape element is effortlessly used to soften the whole design.