IDesignerLab · The Crest, Singapore
A six-metre brick wall, a living olive tree, and a decision to remove a loft entirely — IDesignerLab crafts a home at The Crest where natural light and material honesty become the architecture.
Some homes are defined by what is added. This one is defined, in equal measure, by what was taken away. The existing loft that cut across the dining volume — functionally reasonable, spatially suffocating — was removed. In its place: six metres of open air, a white brick wall rising to the ceiling, and a quality of light that the apartment had never before known.
IDesignerLab describes their philosophy as "Designing Tomorrow. Today." — a phrase that carries weight precisely because it resists nostalgia. For this project at The Crest, the brief arrived through the homeowner Klara, whose Jakarta upbringing instilled a deep affinity for organic materials, tactile surfaces, and interiors that feel genuinely grounded rather than assembled. Her husband Shawn shares her instinct for hosting — the dining space, they agreed, would be the centre of the home. Everything else would follow from there.
The six-metre dining volume — the emotional and architectural centrepiece. Aged white bricks, a travertine table, and an olive tree in a stone planter compose the room's defining drama.
The loft that originally occupied the dining volume had its merits. It provided additional floor area in a city where every square metre carries cost. But it compressed the space, darkened the entry, and broke the visual continuity that IDesignerLab sensed was possible. Their first significant recommendation to the clients was also their most consequential: remove it entirely.
The decision unlocked everything. With the loft gone, the dining area could breathe at the scale it deserved. The six-metre ceiling became a canvas. IDesignerLab introduced aged white craft bricks across the full height of the feature wall — a material that carries the tactile honesty of something genuinely built rather than applied, and that catches light in a way no smooth surface can. Installing them required scaffolding, precision bricklaying at height, and a level of craftsmanship that their dedicated tiler brought with quiet excellence.
"Simplicity is often the most challenging form of design. Achieving a space that feels effortless requires immense discipline."
IDesignerLab
Morning and evening light behave differently in this room — the brick wall absorbs and shifts through the day, making the space feel perpetually alive.
The material palette of this home is a study in restraint applied with conviction. Marble flooring in warm beige tones. A travertine dining table whose rounded form sits in natural conversation with the organic chairs surrounding it. Limewash textures on carpentry surfaces — a departure from conventional laminates that required multiple rounds of trials with their craftsmen before arriving at a finish that felt genuinely raw and tactile rather than decorative. Solid walnut in the furniture. Black accents, introduced sparingly, to provide the depth that prevents a predominantly light palette from dissolving into flatness.
And then, in the corner of the dining room, the olive tree. Planted in a chunky stone pot, it reaches toward the ceiling with the unhurried confidence of something that has grown over time. It is not a styling element. It is structural — the living counterpoint to the aged bricks behind it, the one element in the room that genuinely breathes.
The olive tree — IDesignerLab's living counterpoint to the aged brick wall, grounding the architectural drama in something organic and quietly growing.
The kitchen island introduced another signature challenge. The original vision was for the full island — countertop included — to be finished in the same hand-applied stucco effect as the surrounding carpentry, creating a single monolithic sculptural piece. After trials, the practical reality of stucco on a heavily used work surface became clear. The solution: a Dekton sintered stone countertop in a closely matched finish, preserving the visual intent while delivering the durability the space demanded. The stucco remained on the base and sides, the stone on the working plane. The result is indistinguishable in atmosphere from the original vision — which is precisely the point.
The home in daily life — the dining room receives its inhabitants with the same quality of space regardless of whether the table holds a meal or a quiet afternoon.
One of IDesignerLab's most quietly innovative decisions in this home is the treatment of natural light as an active design element rather than a passive byproduct of window placement. By removing the loft, they allowed light to penetrate the full depth of the apartment for the first time. The brick wall catches it at different angles through the day, shifting from cool morning white to warm afternoon amber — making the room feel differently inhabited at eight in the morning than at six in the evening.
The floating dressing table in the walk-in wardrobe — one of IDesignerLab's design signatures — carries this same philosophy into the private spaces. Designed without visible leg support, it creates an anti-gravity lightness that is at once technically precise and emotionally quiet. It does not announce itself. It simply appears to float, which is its entire statement.
The open-plan configuration allows the kitchen, bar, and living zones to share light and air — a cross-ventilation strategy that reduces mechanical cooling in the home's most inhabited spaces.
Shawn and Klara love to host. This is not incidental to the design — it is foundational. The dining space that opens to the kitchen, the generous table that seats eight comfortably, the bar counter that makes a gathering feel effortless: these are not coincidences. They are the physical expression of a way of living that the architecture was specifically designed to support.
And yet the home is also, undeniably, a retreat. The abundance of natural stone, the limewash surfaces, the heft of solid walnut — these materials demand a slower, more attentive mode of occupancy. You notice them. You run your hand along the travertine and feel its coolness and grain. You look up at the bricks and feel, for a moment, that you are somewhere outside the ordinary rhythm of the city. That balance — between sociality and sanctuary, between grandeur and intimacy — is the core achievement of The Weight of Light, and the reason IDesignerLab considers it among their most complete works.
At rest beneath the travertine table — a home generous enough to hold every member of the family, without exception.