The green enclave Tanarimba in Janda Baik has become something of a Hamptons type weekend getaway for well-heeled city dwellers. Just a half an hour (on a good day) drive and its good bye stifling heat and frenetic city life, hello cooler temperatures and fresh hill breezes. The architecture of these private homesteads range from the unapologetically modern to Balinese timber fantasies, more representative of the owners’ tastes rather than a response to the majestic pine trees and old tropical hardwood forests surrounding them.
However, Twinkle Villa, located on the highest point of Tanarimba, won the best building and a gold award at the Persatuan Arkitek Malaysia Awards in 2017 for “conversing eloquently with the idyllic forest and responding climatically to the setting”. The Awards Jury went on to say: “Hard on the external appearance, it transforms and opens up dramatically towards the woodlands while unravelling the charming and delightful ambience of a retreat within.” The client had approached CY Chan Architect to design a retirement home which was close to nature and a retreat from hectic city life.

From the very first meeting, his main request was keeping the site as intact possible. “The client’s design brief was to preserve the original surroundings so construction methodology had to be kept at a minimum. This aligned with our thoughts from our first site visit back in 2014 when we got stung by bees while exploring the topography of the site, this inspired us to design a house that would blend with nature without chasing them out,” reminisces Lim Kee Yen, lead architect on Twinkle Villa.
As a result, the ultimate design is a response to the client’s brief as well as the context. “We choose the flattest land within the site boundary to avoided cutting too much of the earth and felling big trees. All trees with more than 1.6m diameter in width were identified and out of these 115 trees, only two were sacrificed for the building’s final setting-out. This determined the elongated rectangular shape which became the building’s footprint,” explains Lim.