In a Park by L Architects
In a Park by L Architects is a renovation of a three-bedroom apartment in northeast Singapore, reworked for a client whose horticultural practice has grown from personal interest into a defining part of daily life.
Like many homes adapted during the pandemic, the original layout was never intended to support a household shaped by plants. Light, placement, and circulation were constrained, leaving greenery confined to the margins of the interior.
The project begins with a simple, clear ambition: to make plant life central to how the home is experienced, from the first moments of the day through to its quieter routines. With the apartment no longer meeting the needs of an expanding collection, the design rethinks how the household moves, pauses, and inhabits space, ensuring greenery is encountered as an active presence throughout.
To anchor this shift, L Architects drew from the familiar language of Singapore’s older public parks. A specific detail surfaced as both material and memory: the double-bullnose brick, historically used for benches, edging, and planters in outdoor civic settings. Once commonplace, it has gradually slipped from contemporary use, becoming a near-forgotten element of the city’s built landscape.
This rediscovery became more urgent during sourcing. A local factory had already ceased production due to dwindling demand, leaving only 571 pieces in remaining stock. With a fixed quantity available, the brick was treated as a finite resource, deployed with care across key moments in the plan.
Its rounded profile brings softness to the interior and makes curvature possible without heavy visual weight. The bricks are tessellated into a freestanding wall that gently mediates between the study and living area, offering separation while maintaining permeability. Between the study and dining spaces, they shape a curved bench that acts as a shared threshold, usable from both sides and extending the home’s capacity for rest and conversation. These gestures introduce openness and continuity, qualities associated with outdoor space, while keeping the apartment’s domestic scale intact.
Through a restrained palette and precise detailing, In a Park repositions an overlooked material within a contemporary home, showing how architectural character can be built from modest means. By treating greenery as an organising principle and allowing the double-bullnose brick to guide spatial transitions, the renovation finds new value in what is ordinary, making a familiar apartment feel quietly expansive, lived-in, and closely connected to plant life.
