Location: South Tangerang, Indonesia

Design Team: K-Thengono Design Studio

Area: 712 m²

Year: 2026

Lead Architect: Kelvin Thengono

Senior Architectural Designer: Natashia Angelina T. S.

Interior Designers: Selwyn Kusuma, Sheren Pricillia Sanusi

Project Manager: Fachrudin Faruq

Structural Consultant: Hadi & Associates

Landscape Consultant: Studio Asa

Lighting Consultant: PT. Dharmawan Technologies

Photography: Mario Wibowo, Finbarr Fallon

Design Features: Split Mass Residence occupies a corner plot within the BSD residential district of South Tangerang, Indonesia. Exposure to two streets offers daylight and outward views but also leaves domestic life more visible. K-Thengono Design Studio responds with layers of mass, courtyard and framed outlook rather than treating the corner as two facades. An L-shaped public volume follows the front and side boundaries at ground level, sheltering a quieter garden behind, while the larger upper mass holds the private programme and establishes a measured transition from openness to retreat.

The more consequential division occurs through movement. The upper volume is pulled down toward the street and lifted at the rear, turning circulation into a primary architectural element. On the second level, the route doubles as an indoor theatre with stepped seating, continues to a rooftop pool, then climbs toward a yoga terrace and fully planted roof. What might have been a corridor becomes a domestic promenade moving between interior, garden, water and sky.

Overlapping routes create several loops rather than a single line of return. Views repeatedly reconnect with the courtyard from different heights, while the planted roof becomes an inhabited part of daily life instead of a surface seen from below. Living room, theatre, pool and yoga area are not isolated destinations; they are revealed through a sequence of ascent, turning and pause.

Operable woven screens made from recycled PET rattan wrap the upper circulation zones. They admit air while filtering solar glare and views, allowing residents to adjust privacy and exposure through the day. Deep overhangs, courtyards and receding planted roofs reinforce cross-ventilation and carry daylight further into the house. Environmental performance is therefore inseparable from the changing light, temperature and pace of the route.

Rounded corners answer the geometry of the hook-shaped site and soften the weight of the upper mass. Bamboo-textured concrete gives the grounded base a fine tactile grain, while the woven envelope shifts in transparency with the sun. The house reads as a layered terrain activated by movement: privacy is achieved without complete closure, and openness is carefully filtered. Courtyards, screens, ramps and roofs allow domestic life to keep unfolding through the section.

Design Team: K-Thengono Design Studio was founded in 2019 by architect Kelvin Thengono. Based in Jakarta, the practice integrates architecture and interior design. Thengono studied architecture at California College of the Arts and previously worked with architectural offices in the United States and Bali across residential, hospitality, commercial, workplace and healthcare projects. This international background informs a practice attentive to context, spatial experience and the practical realities of tropical environments.

The studio begins with environmental conditions and the client's lived needs, using historical research, local craft and material exploration to shape each project's narrative. Natural light, water and ventilation are treated as contributors to well-being, while contractors, consultants and craftspeople are brought into a collaborative process. Vernacular knowledge is not applied as imagery; it works alongside contemporary technology to address climate, culture and construction.

The practice works across houses, hospitality, restaurants, retail and community-oriented spaces. In 2026 it received the Architizer A+Awards Popular Choice Award for Best Young Firm and the Jury Award for Best Local Firm. Split Mass Residence extends the studio's research into tropical living by shifting attention from static rooms to continuous routes, locating architectural value in the changing bodily experience of courtyard, screen, roof and water.