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Fish House Imagines Waves and Billowing Gusts of Cool Sea Breezes

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A tranquil and refreshing design for a gorgeous and carbon neutral seaside Singapore house suggests not just the undulating movement of swimming fish, but makes reference to other cooling notions. But it is not all just beauty and grace.

Under this elegant home by Guz Architects is an incredibly innovative and simple tech cooling concept that I don’t think I’ve ever seen used before.

The green roof is an accessible roof deck open to the ocean breezes. Beneath it are the kitchen and the dining areas. The second billowing roof behind it shelters the master bedroom / bathroom beneath. This outdoor stairway from the master bedroom takes you up to the “green roof” hill roof. Building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) as thin film solar power on the roof provides all the electricity for the entire house.

The undulating roof not only powers the house, but it celebrates everything about the ocean that the house dreams of (in stark contrast to the more prosaic buildings we see behind it on the mainland).

Cooled by through breezes, the simplest possible master bedroom is also the master bathroom. A single, large, open airy space.  No air conditioning is used, for environmental friendliness. Instead, fans move air throughout, and…

… because the master bedroom/bathroom opens to a grass lawn in the back, the air is cooled before it wafts through the bedroom. But you knew about this kind of cooling technique, right?

What I’ll bet you’ve never seen before is an astonishing use of cooling below ground. The Fish House uses this lovely swimming pool to cool the house.

An underground glass room juts out into the middle of the swimming pool, beneath this white deck.

A basement room under the water is entirely cooled by the swimming pool that surrounds it on three sides.  To catch the news down here: a modest TV; because that doesn’t waste electricity like a big flashy plasma TV.

This underwater retreat is not just for kicks though. The cooled space creates a “thermal sink” that radiates the swimming pool-cooled air up through the house.

Source: Contemporist
Photography by Patrick Bingham Hall