Silver A' Design Award Winner 2025
Tonny Wirawan Suriadjaja's Theater House Residential Home functions as a sophisticated spatial narrative encoding contemporary values around transparency, nature integration, and the dissolution of traditional domestic boundaries. The tripartite vertical organization may be interpreted through archetypal frameworks of cosmic hierarchy, with the grounded base representing earthly foundation and practical living functions, the transparent middle zone suggesting social exchange and daily ritual, and the elevated private volumes above approaching celestial aspiration and intimate retreat. The architect's strategic deployment of illumination transforms the dwelling into a lantern archetype, the primal symbol of home as beacon, refuge, and orientation point within darkness, a meaning reinforced by the twilight setting that places the work at a threshold moment between day and night, activity and rest, public and private. The extensive glazing encodes modernist values of transparency, honesty, and the rejection of bourgeois concealment, while the integration of living plant material throughout signals biophilic consciousness and ecological awareness increasingly central to contemporary design discourse. The cylindrical columns reference classical architectural vocabulary, perhaps suggesting timeless dwelling archetypes while their minimal diameter emphasizes contemporary structural efficiency. The terraced approach with its broad steps creates a processional sequence encoding hospitality and welcome, the gradual transition from public realm to private sanctuary. Material choices of warm timber against cool concrete establish dialectical relationships between natural and manufactured, organic and geometric, yielding and resistant, suggesting a harmonious integration of complementary forces rather than dominance of either.
The primary objective is to establish a seamless connection between each program of the house by creating a split-level space throughout, from the initial encounter to the heart of the house. This design strategy also conveys a sense of spaciousness and unobstructed open space between the poolside terrace, living dining room, and covered multi-function terrace. The upper floor contains the master and children's bedrooms, each with access to a roof garden.