Situated at a breakaway off the extensive Bukit Timah Road, Maple House (named after the street it fronts) shields a couple and their child from the fast-paced bustle. The family required a relatively simple dwelling to accomodate a living and tea spaces, a kitchen for alfresco dining, two bedrooms and one guestroom - all with access to gardens, an auxiliary space, and a pond with a lounge deck.

In response, the architectural volume retained its rubble boundary and old pitched roof profile, with spaces below arranged about a long hall. This recycle of scale and material is an ode to past inhabitants, preserving both house and neighbourhood form. The previous sloping ground at the front, however, has been levelled down to make space for a car porch, while keeping the dwelling raised. The exterior maintains a nondescript character with its rugged edge, charred facades, and elevated openings under the introverted roof.

Up the entrance steps, one enters a small vestibule. Its floor and wall are variegated with timber strips and the pitch seen outside is concealed by a flat ceiling. This raised nook is a reception space that can also be used for meetings, away from private quarters deeper inside. In rhythm with the strips, a tall portal slides open, revealing the hall which serves as the living and tea rooms. Here, the pitched roof is strongly felt; everything is aligned - timber runs the full length of the planes, concealing service spaces, and at times, fashioned into furniture. Where it stops, apertures are delineated, framing a world outside.

Maple House revisits a humbler way of living in Singapore by caring for the family's needs within a single storey. The dwelling explores a relationship between inheriting past forms and new modalities for living - reinterpreting our vernacular scale while nudging softly at the modern force of maximisation.