Keeping cool in tropical Singapore can be a challenge, even if one chooses to turn expensive and wasteful air-conditioning up to full. Therefore, when Wallflower Architecture and Design created the Wind Vault House on the island city state, the company installed a carefully-considered passive cooling system.
The barn-like Wind Vault House is, frankly, a very attractive build, and the two-story (plus attic) home features three bedrooms, three bathrooms, maid's quarters, a prayer room, and even an elevator. The property measures 553 sq m (5,950 sq ft), and is raised on concrete stilt-like tubes.
As its name suggests, Wind Vault House was built with a view to maximizing the prevailing winds coming from the nearby coastline, and thus its north and south facades sport multiple function timber screens. In addition to offering privacy and reducing the sun's glare, the timber screens can be angled, almost like a ship's sail, to catch the breeze and channel it into the house.
Wind Vault House also features a swimming pool, placed to serve as an evaporative cooling surface and lower the temperature of the local air, much like the YAK01 house we reported on earlier this month.
Wallflower Architecture and Design also planted a line of Polyalthia trees along the boundary of the plot, and the company reports that these help lower the air's temperature as the breeze passes through.
Wind Vault House was completed in 2012.
Source: Wallflower Architecture and Design, via Arch Daily
