Teduh House - Co-working, Co-living in the Tropical Malaysian Context

The project called for a revamp of a house more than 50 years old with only a very limited budget to be rented out after completion. Its entire dilapidated roof is needed to be changed.

Design Question

What does well-being look like?

How can architecture help us live, work, and dwell better?

Can we improvise the old Malaysian terrace house architecture?



The Proposal

We took the opportunity to propose something radical, benefiting the immediate surrounding for the users, the neighborhood, the place on a larger scale, and the community as a whole.

The designs welcome ample daylighting into the house, creating a courtyard that would give life to all other spaces, and fill the front yard and the back yard with landscapes. The backyard is also beautified to support the act of back lane uplifting initiatives.



Sign and Signified. Inspiring the Visitors.

To help set forth great experimental ideas to coexist with plants and people, the design is conceived to encourage human ideas exchange, to spark liked minded to continue to make the world a better meaningful place to live,



We rented the place to promote, and experiment with Malaysian architecture and to observe the post-occupancy effects on users and the place. The place is made into Airbnb rooms, a tattoo artist studio, and co-working areas with a kitchen and a bathroom. They comprise architectural attributes like landscaping, furniture, and art that improves retreat, sleep, rest, work, social gathering, and private meetings in the place.



The Concept, the Program, and the Content

The designs extend the concept of the outdoor landscape into the indoor environment in the forms of 3 landscape pockets – the front yard garden, the courtyard garden, and the backyard filled with trees and plants.



Situated in a context where off-road parking is available, the design prioritizes human interaction and green spaces than just car parking spaces. The vistas in the house are centered around landscaping and art instead of cars and television. The shadows from the trees encourage social gathering around the trees. While the user nurtures the tree, it increases the tendency of users to communicate with the neighbor.



On the Tree, Under the Tree

The courtyard filled with landscape stones and trees maintains a biophilic relationship between users and the place, giving the concept of living under the tree. On the loft at the common co-working and living area, the vista adds a feeling like dwelling on a tree.

When one travels from one space to another, such as the co-working area to the kitchen at the back, one experiences crossing a river of stones and spaces underneath the tree with ample daylight and washing the plants during the daytime.





The Program

To challenge the old terrace house in the context of the suburban environment, half of the house in the form of private rooms was made into Bnb rooms, a tattoo studio; while the other half is a co-working and a social gathering space.

With the spatial structure of half rooms, a half common area made with 2 separate front entrances, and one back entrance, the house is able to increase usage variety and creativity, such as a home office use, for social meetings, and Bnb hosting with the bedroom with a private bathroom.



The Content

Why Co-working and Co-living?

Hit by the effect of the pandemic lockdown and the ever-rising living cost, we immediately find deep meaning in having companions, whether friends, family, co-workers, or someone caring for each other, by simply seeing or hearing each other for well-being. The house designs were challenged to create a composition of a social gathering place for catching up, working, businesses, and retreating close to the city with economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable qualities in mind.





Home-office

We find various design and related professions have the potential to work remotely for a better quality both to the professionals and the society. With the ill-planned urban-suburban network and the geographical segregation of both the workplace and the housing, time and well-being become the biggest loss due to commuting.



On suburban-urbanism

To combat the city donut effect where people work and enliven the city with a dynamic density only during near work hours, but cause traffic jams during a certain period of time in and outside of the city, the home office is conceived to be able to reduce commuting while increasing work effectiveness. It also reduces the urban heat island effect, singularly using efficiency thread to the city office buildings.





Reversing damage by the housing development

In response to the way, the housing development is being developed cheaply and incorrectly –

by flattening the earth, destroying natural foliage and wildlife settlement, and disregarding the contour, the designs capture spaces that welcome natural daylighting, and ventilation, and refill them with plants.





Outside indoor

The idea of extending the outside landscape into the interiority of the house improves the relationship between people, users, and mother nature, subsequently, it helps build a community, building a society that starts from different levels of social interaction.



Nature and Nurture

The design sees nature such as human interaction, the local climate, weather, natural daylighting, and ventilation as important elements in human dwellings. By introducing trees and plants into the human living environment, the concept of taking care (nurturing) of the environment is established. The tranquil ambiance and the immediate surrounding that the plants give out subsequently created meaningful meetings and gathering for users to interact.



On part and whole

In this project, we liked to think that a house is an extension of a part of the bigger neighborhood or the city.

By bringing mother nature into the house, and adding plants and trees in the front yard and the back yard, the architecture contributes not only to building better indoor quality, but to the entire ecosystem of the place, the neighborhood, and the world as a whole.