Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Permeability Housed by Tang Hsiao Seak of Tangu Architecture in collaboration with its client, Steven Ngu, is more than a house in an established suburb of Greater Kuala Lumpur—it is a progressive testbed for sustainable design innovation and research.

Facing toward the east and set within a close-knitted community, this house has been renovated incongruently over the years.  

It has now been transformed into a progressive testbed for design innovation, research & development, and trial of ideas and principles.

For its innovative and inspired design, Permeability Housed has recently been awarded a 2022 Green Good Design Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. 

The design approach stems from a minimalistic standpoint that “lightness” — of the building footprint, carbon footprint, weight, construction, materials, logistics, and embedded energy — applied through the well-considered design of the spatial configuration, envelope, and form, coupled with the principles of “permeability” of the elements brings forth holistic sustainable solutions.

These are fundamentally found in time-tested passive concepts, vernacular practices, and occur in natural processes and phenomena.

The project is embodied by the equation “lightness + permeability = sustainability.”

The design principles and strategies based on this equation and applied to this project were found in the following built solutions:

– Configuration of three sub-units of extended family—bedroom suites are hinged around a common area on each floor analogically akin to a village.

– Spatial configuration composing of box (private); congregation (communal); transient (ephemeral, in-between).

This takes form through the following spaces with different grades of privacy: Living + Dining – communal; Gallery (transient) – in-between in/out; Social Kitchen – communal; Chef’s Kitchen (box) – semi-private; Bedroom Suites (box) – private.

These spaces are wrapped by intermediate and transient spaces, such as the entrance courtyard, double-story gallery, atrium, and attic, which are climatically ephemeral, dynamic, multi-story, multi-layered for circulation as well as for climatic cushion, air exchange, visual buffers, and vertical planting. 

The extension that wraps around the existing concrete frame is encapsulated by the lightness of a steel frame lattice, chosen for its rigidity and robustness to help spread the loads around the perimeter. 

The project introduces a new kind of intermediary space between house-garden-street that fosters communal interaction and observation by blurring the boundaries of spaces, as well as programming ambiguity and multiplicity of usage. 

The design of the envelope is layered with different materials and constructions, bringing forth and multiplying the benefits of topsoil and microbes in a CO2/02 cycle.

A blue-green cycle (rainwater harvesting, vertical + subsoil irrigation, detention/retention, cooling, aquaponic) is fully integrated, promoting on-site micro biodiversity and passive cooling.

Permeability also controls elements of air (breeze, convection, cushion, exchange plenum/atrium), light (direct, diffused, reflected, filtered), cooling (radiation, insulation, shading, evaporative), and views (direct, obscured, screened, borrowed, object).  

The project combines new usage and repurposing of traditional artisanal construction and vernacular materials such as clay (drain) for channels, planters & lightweight green roofs, cane (rattan) whicker for fence/door/screen application, cement screening, and plastering techniques for flooring and walls instead of tile finish.

Old timber was re-used for wall framing and roofing, while old rubble stones were used for landscaping.

Materials were selected for the lowest embedded energy, their lightness, unprocessed rawness, thinness, and simplicity of construction.

This contributed to lower consumption of energy both embedded and sustained during construction.

Working with the rawness of materials and construction, leaving behind traces of history, expressing pureness of materiality, paring down to the essence, and accepting imperfections such as weathering, patina, and mistakes are at the heart of the Tang Architecture’s practice, much like the Japanese concept of “wabi-sabi.”

Project: Permeability Housed
Architects: Tangu Architecture Sdn Bhd
Lead Architect: Tang Hsiao Seak
Design Development: Steven Ngu
Client: Steven Ngu
Photographers: Tang Hsiao Seak