Project Name: Armoua House

Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Design Team: Fabian Tan Architect

Total Floor Area: 678 m²

Completion: 2025

Photography: Bricksbegin

Feature: Fabian Tan Architect's Armoua House demonstrates how bold structural expression and warm materiality strategies can transform a residence on an end-lot terrace site in Kuala Lumpur into an architectural exemplar that fuses ancient construction wisdom with contemporary spatial quality.

This 678-square-meter residence dramatically challenges traditional residential construction patterns, presenting itself as a profound meditation on contemporary Malaysian urban lifestyle integration, structural honesty, and ecological integration fusion. Through carefully considered structural revelation and material selection, it creates a living experience that seamlessly weaves vertical living sequences with horizontal spatial expansion.

The project's most compelling design feature lies in its fundamental response and reimagining of unexpected opportunity. Confronting the unique challenge of acquiring an adjacent unit during construction and merging two separate dwellings into one, the architects employed an exposed column-beam system as the organizational strategy of the residence, while achieving spatial continuity and superior natural lighting and ventilation effects. This design strategy creates continuous dialogue between architecture and functional requirements, achieving structural expression effects that present the building with an overall sculptural castle-in-the-sky quality.

Fabian Tan's design language fluently expresses contemporary Southeast Asian architectural vernacular, employing strategic structural exposure and material layering to redefine living experiences within urban contexts. The architecture combines simple geometric elements, with exposed deep beams extending like architectural ribs, creating interior experiences that evoke distinct spatial perceptions. Its form presents an almost monolithic sculptural quality, through pink-toned pigmented concrete, conveying warm earth-like materiality. This bold formal strategy not only reinforces the building's visual identity but cleverly accommodates contemporary urban family life's dual demands for privacy and openness.

Most remarkably, the architects create a layered spatial system through clever manipulation of exposed structural framework. In the original unit, exposed deep beams extend outward perpendicular to the facade, like structural spines extending the sense of interior depth to the exterior. In the extended unit, beams pierce longitudinally from front to rear, creating a contrasting subtle dialogue. This structural design is integrated as part of the architectural language, prioritizing spatial depth while creating a visual effect where the architecture feels perpetually open.

The residence is organized into three vertical functional layers. The ground floor adapts to site conditions, housing utility spaces. The first floor concentrates bedroom spaces, providing private living environment. The top floor contains main living spaces, including living room, kitchen and entertainment areas, organized through a newly introduced central courtyard. This courtyard becomes the anchor of the enlarged plan, bringing daylight and ventilation into what would otherwise have been deep interior spaces. At night, the beams and ceiling planes are softly illuminated, allowing the expressive structure to remain visible from the street. The rooftop level offers an open deck, planted with fruit trees, presenting panoramic views of the skyline.

Material strategy continues this harmonious coexistence design philosophy between architecture and environmental sustainability. Through the use of warm pink-toned pigmented concrete as an alternative to typical grey, the residence is given a warm earth-like quality resembling a monolithic castle in the sky. Dense perimeter planting wraps the site boundary as a natural buffer, providing privacy, reducing heat, and integrating edible plants that the owners actively maintain. Sustainable systems such as solar panels, rainwater harvesting, and automated irrigation support the ecological design approach, demonstrating Fabian Tan's commitment to environmental responsibility and architectural innovation.

Design Team: Fabian Tan Architect stands as a distinguished representative of contemporary Malaysian architectural practice, founded in Kuala Lumpur in 2012 by principal architect Fabian Tan with operations extending to Penang, having established a pioneering reputation in contemporary residential design and contextually sensitive architectural language innovation since its founding. This Kuala Lumpur-based practice redefines contemporary Southeast Asian architects' role in international design discourse through coordinated integration of design refinement and site responsiveness.

Fabian Tan brings exceptional spatial refinement design perspectives and deep understanding of construction holistic integration approaches to architectural practice. Fabian Tan's architectural foundation was established at the University of South Australia, where he graduated with Honours in Bachelor of Architecture in 1997. Prior to establishing his eponymous practice, he accumulated 11 years of comprehensive experience at prominent architectural offices in Kuala Lumpur and Melbourne, developing expertise across residential, institutional, commercial and interior typologies. This formative period was marked by parallel explorations in art, furniture design and installations, pursuits that ultimately catalyzed his decision to launch an independent practice. The practice has garnered recognition for its commitment to harmoniously integrating projects with contextually specific requirements and aesthetic refinement, creating customized spatial experiences. Its portfolio has received awards and favorable publication across Asia and Europe, demonstrating cohesively unified design methodology.

The firm's design philosophy emphasizes that architecture should transcend traditional limitations, through an approach of evolution and flexibility, designed not merely to satisfy functional requirements but to create site-responsive solutions and holistic spatial quality application. Through deep attention to site-specific recognition and spatial constituent integration, including light, material, volume and relational hierarchies, working across diversified works from residential to commercial projects, they believe the best architecture results from contextually responsive interventions through rigorous reassessment of architectural conventions. Fabian Tan believes architecture should embody the essence and consistency of space, creating unique architectural experiences through strategic restraint and refinement.

Beyond practice, through thoughtful integration of structural honesty with material warmth, spatial holism and environmental efficiency application, and tested sustainable design wisdom, Fabian Tan Architect has established itself as a significant contributor to contemporary Southeast Asian architectural discourse, creating architectural works that are both functionally responsive and maintain subtle beauty. Under the continued leadership of Fabian Tan, the firm currently occupies a unique position within Malaysia's dynamic architectural landscape, focusing on creating spatial experiences that achieve architectural quality through restraint refinement, structural expression, and spatial holism. In this hectic and overly complicated era, restraint and refinement serve as its guiding philosophy, creating buildings of subtle beauty.