Finding grandeur in simplicity and warmth in eastern Singapore

There is a particular discipline required to build a home that says everything through what it withholds. At Jalan Khairuddin, on a quiet street in eastern Singapore, Mark 12 Architects has done precisely that. Cornerstone is a complete rebuild: a two-storey semi-detached house with a mezzanine, an attic, and a swimming pool. Its predecessor was demolished to make way for something more considered: a home commissioned by a client whose ambition was to demonstrate what high-end landed living could be at its finest. Mark 12 Architects, led by Principal Architect Clement Koh with Lim Le Xuan and Varian Chang, realised it as a multi-generational haven, airy and grounded, where quality is felt in every detail.

That patience shows. Nothing here feels rushed or accidental. The brief called for minimalist aesthetics suited to the tropics, open and ventilated, and connected to the outdoors, with a mezzanine to maximise floor area and a swimming pool to anchor the garden. Mark 12’s response begins not with the interior but with the building’s relationship to its surroundings. Partially embraced by lush mature greenery, the house reaches outward through pockets of garden, balconies, and voids across multiple levels, drawing natural light and cross-ventilation deep into the plan. The result is less a house that sits in nature than one that folds nature into itself.

The façade is the home’s most immediate declaration of intent. Rendered in off-form concrete with warm wood-grain accents, a series of intricately designed sun-shading screens fragments the building’s mass into rhythmic vertical patterns, giving the residence a legible cadence and a human sense of proportion. With a mezzanine added to an already two-storey structure, there was a genuine concern that the home might read as out of scale with its neighbours. The screens dissolve that risk with grace, allowing the home to stand confidently within its context rather than apart from it.

Step inside, and the double-volume living and dining hall announces itself as the heart of the home. Full-height glazing floods the generous space with soft, diffused natural light throughout the day. Underfoot, large-format polished Agora Beige marble from Surface Projects, its warm cream tones threaded with rich veining, lends the room a quiet opulence that stops well short of ostentation. At the rear, a dry kitchen with a beige countertop from Infinity Surface extends the functionality of the dining space without interrupting its easy flow.

The verandah is where the home exhales. Positioned at the threshold between the interior and the swimming pool and garden, a finely slatted woodgrain trellis overhead casts rhythmic shadow patterns across the floor as the sun moves across the house, making the simple act of sitting still feel like enough.

No single element defines the interior more than the staircase. A boldly angular steel stringer, folded and faceted like a sculptural plane, ascends through three levels in a single uninterrupted sweep. Its matte black finish is drawn into sharp relief against the exposed off-form concrete wall that flanks it, while the oak flooring, warm in tone and grain, continues underfoot. A continuous LED-lit oak custom handrail traces the ascent with an amber glow.

Beneath the stair, a curated dry garden of white granite pebbles, moss, rocks, and a single carefully placed tree turns what might have been dead space into a moment of quiet contemplation. Natural daylight streams from above through the full height of the void, so that the simple act of moving between floors becomes a choreographed experience of light, shadow, and material — an everyday ritual elevated into something worth noticing.

In the powder room, a custom sculptural sink in Iconic Cipollino from Infinity Surface by Kstone Pte Ltd becomes a centrepiece. The continuous veining flows across the surface with depth and quiet elegance, paired with a basin mixer from the Hansgrohe Axor series and warm, understated lighting that celebrates craft without ceremony.

The master bathroom carries the same sensibility with greater amplitude. White Statuario marble walls are paired with rock-salt textured tiles from Florim and a dark Dekton countertop from Cosentino, a juxtaposition of tones and textures that evokes timelessness without coldness. Sanitaryware from TOTO and Hansgrohe completes a space conceived as a sanctuary, a place to restore as much as to refresh.

Throughout, a tightly controlled palette of off-form concrete, American white oak, galvanised steel, marble, and stone is applied consistently from floor to ceiling, room to room. Minimalism here is not an absence but a discipline: each material earns its place, each surface carries its own quiet weight. It took Mark 12 Architects two years to arrive at this result, nine months of design and fifteen months of construction. The time shows not in complexity for its own sake, but in the confidence of every decision. Tranquility, it turns out, is not something you can rush.

Mark 12 Architects
mark12.sg

Photography by Finbarr Fallon

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