Inside Malaysia's Smallest House | Romantic Villa House tour | Tiny Garden Home

Well, when I first came to the site, I thought, wow, you know, these enormous trees. So it's very comfortable. I'll be quite happy to live in a house like that when I get old, which I'm not yet. My name is Alex Lee and I am from Design Seeds. Today's episode, we are about to unveil the smallest home we ever featured on our channel. Before we begin, don't forget to subscribe and click on that notification buzzer to stay in the loop of more compelling episodes. The idea of building a romantic honeymoon villa occurred to Jamalia Hamdan in 2017 when she was planning her daughter's wedding. The site is on a hillside overlooking Sungai Langat at Pekan Batu 18, 29 kilometres to the east of Kuala Lumpur. The selected site involves a short but strenuous climb to a relatively level plateau. The plan of the single storey pavilion is unpretentious. The linear accommodation is just 3.6 metres wide and looks into an exquisite semi-walk garden with a series of cool steel ponds and four gentle waterfalls creating the superific sound of running water. Consisting of an intimate living and dining room, a wonderfully romantic bed chamber, an open to sky bathroom beneath the forest canopy and a cantilevered east-facing balcony. The client's brief was initially to design a garden but Inch Lim, the celebrated Malaysian garden designer, subsequently advised Jamalia to build a simple pavilion in a partially walled garden. She wanted me to make a garden for her. I said, no, no, no, no, you don't need a garden, you need a house and a garden because if you have only a garden you'll never come here but if you have a very comfortable little house you can comfortably come here and wake up in the morning to the garden. I like to think that we always think outside the box, we try and think something different although we adopt all the classical languages and the classical lessons that is learnt in landscape and architecture. My name is Inch, I have a company called Inchscape. Currently what I do is I design things for a living. The walled garden is the culmination of a steep climb, a processional route circles to the north, arriving at the plateau before turning to approach the house from the west. Stepping through a timber door set in a portal is a bench conveniently located to the left of the entrance and a view opens up to a borrowed landscape of mountains to the east. Inch has choreographed a route circumventing the water course and descending via a series of shallow platforms to a sliding timber door that gives access to the living space entered by a short flight of steps. The interior of the dwelling is a continuation of that romantic journey from the living and dining area overlooking the garden to a bed chamber with a four-poster bed and thence to an outdoor bathroom beneath the forest canopy. The cantilever veranda projects to the east, a cool shaded space in the evening. It is designed to feel like floating in the middle of the jungle. The site facing on the villa is directed to face the scenic cascading landscape. Avoiding direct sunlight, the picturesque view is always pleasant to the eye. The bedroom faces larger greeneries that gives the interior more privacy and shade, keeping the bedroom always in a romantic and cosy setting. The bedroom leads to the end of the layout with the most iconic feature in the villa an open-to-sky bathtub as the focal highlight, complemented with the high gable roof feature that lies shaded beneath the tall, unruffled tropical trees. In the old days, we didn't have good waterproofing anyway. If you have a flat roof, you would have no end of problems. In a situation like that, it's much better to have a picture of the rain runs off and the leaf falls off. The structure of the pavilion came about in a serendipitous manner. Inch Lim learned of an abandoned sawmill at Labis in Johor and in 2014 suggested acquiring the timber that was still in good condition and recycling it to construct a wedding hall at the foot of the hill and using surplus timber to construct the honeymoon pavilion. Accordingly selected timber trusses, beams, purlins, rafters, joists and cladding were transported north and cleverly incorporated into a new structure. The visible bolt holes indicate the former function of the recycled timber. Doors are also fashioned from the recycled timber. I always find that old timber is better for construction mainly because of all the warping and all the shrinking and all that's done so the timber is not going to shrink or warp. There are a few things about this recycled timber. You see you need to split the timber up and the worst enemy that you have would be nails and if you don't spot the nail and pull them out it will blunt your saw. Obviously it's a lot more convenient to use sawn timber because it's exactly the size you want but in a way it makes it a very special project. A project that cannot be repeated again and won't be repeated again. So you have a very special house all handmade. The walk garden has nurtured Jamalia's growing interest in biophilia which is defined as the therapeutic effect of contact with nature. The positive effects on healing from interaction with nature were evident. Jamalia, the owner, is planning a biophilic retreat by Sungai Langan. Following Jeffrey Bauer's famous maxim that no one should ever chop down a tree always move the building. The garden court is structured around this magnificent specimen. We retain all the trees because the trees are so magnificent it takes it would take a long time before you can get these beautiful trees out to this site ever again. You see there are two things about gardens. The basic and most important one is light. You have to manipulate it so that you get sufficient light for your plants. When you have very tall trees the danger is you cut out too much light and the plants will grow. So what we did was we slotted the house in between the trees and we left the open area for the garden. My plants need to grow in the morning sun. If this was an afternoon sun it wouldn't be the same. They love morning sun so I set up the garden in the morning sun. We needed to identify the space so we did it by using walls and doors and the hedge so that gives us intimacy. And then we use the water feature for two things. One is that it directs our view so when you look down from the top the water cascades down and points really directly at that top of that hill. And of course to make sure that it's a beautiful comfortable garden that you can have privacy. You see you come in from the back and the first thing you encounter is this spring. And the spring is designed so that it doesn't move too fast and therefore it reflects all the trees. Then it just flows down from one cascade to another until it eventually arrives at a small pond at the end. It's lovely sitting here sort of listening to that water cascading down. I think the trick really is that the height and the volume of water has to be finely tuned so you get the sound but not too much of the sound. I'm getting old and I want to have something to work on until I'm 99 and fall over into my plants. So until I'm 99 I'll be gardening. The Villa Sanctuary as it is known with its collection of lush plants provides tranquility and a sense of peace and harmony through its composition of stone flowing water and plants. Sitting in the wall garden at dawn surrounded by nature observing the sun breaking through the mist the blue green hills to the east are suddenly sharply defined. Butterflies and birds dart from plant to plant. There is utter silence and time to reflect on the blessings of life. There is a feeling of contentment in this magical dwelling. Jamila describes it as a piece of heaven that reminds me of verses in the Quran. We are such fortunate, we designers are such fortunate people. Like I said before you know you have a dream and somebody else pays for you to bring that dream down and to actually actualize it. Right, can you imagine that? It's amazing, it's amazing life but obviously you're not likely to be rich but that's okay you have a rich life without being rich. I am a strong believer of passion and dreams. I certainly agree with Insh. As designers the contentment and blessings of our nature of occupation is that we get appointed to bring dreams to life. We thank you for supporting us throughout these years in bringing up the design scene and its value. We are constantly hunting high and low to unveil more and more compelling design episodes. Support us by clicking on the super thanks button below and help contribute for us to expand our capacity. My name is Alex Lee and I am from Design Seeds. Don't forget to subscribe and click on the notification buzzer to stay in the loop of more interior design and architecture contents. Thank you for watching, I'll see you guys next week.