Photographic material, house for Wee Cho Yaw (1961), Jalan Asuhan, Singapore 新加坡惹蘭阿素罕黄祖耀住宅（1961年）影像資料

Wee Cho Yaw, then managing director of United Overseas Bank (UOB), commissioned the Malayan Architects Co-partnership to design this house in central Singapore in the early 1960s. The house is one of several developed during the firm’s first years of practice that adapt modernist approaches to space and construction to the vernacular materials and tropical climate of Singapore and Malaysia. Wee continued his collaboration with principal Lim Chong Keat when he hired Architects Team 3, Malayan Architects Co-partnership’s successor firm, to realise the UOB headquarters a decade later.

Placed far back on its site at the end of a residential road, in plan the building reads as a loose, asymmetrical grouping of rectangles. A curving driveway and manicured lawn lead to the house’s entrance, which is tucked under a slightly cantilevered upper level that anchors its northern side. Clad in dark timber panelling, this volume perches on top of bands of glass and light-coloured brick; a flat overhang juts out between the levels to create a shaded terrace. To the south, the flat roofline continues, while the facade pulls back to define a deep semi-exterior balcony overlooking a smaller, one-storey volume in front.

This series consists of four exterior photographs showing the house from the front and rear, and two interior photographs showing the living room and furnishings.