Practicality and a lack of pomposity make this young family home endearing to its residents and their visitors.

Architect Carlo Dominic “Miko” delos Reyes, 34, envisioned his house to evolve to accommodate the growing needs of his wife, Nicole Tantoco, and their daughter Yani. Hence, the easy-to-furnish rooms and open layouts evolve over time and the natural sunlight and breezes from the cross ventilation promote well-being.

The charm lies in inspirations from Sri Lankan architect, Geoffrey Bawa, the proponent of tropical modern design.

Tropical modernism

On his mother’s advice to invest in real estate as a leverage to build wealth, Delos Reyes used his savings to buy a property in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, in 2014. In that same year, he met Nicole, daughter of Rustan’s Commercial Corp. president Bienvenido “Donnie” Tantoco III.

When they were engaged in 2016, Delos Reyes decided to build their home on that lot and started making design studies. He specializes in residential projects of his family’s architectural firm, Imaginax.

“I wanted a family home that would be relevant for us in the years to come,” he says.

After their wedding in 2018, the newlyweds spent their honeymoon in Sri Lanka where they stayed in two of Bawa’s famous projects—Heritance Kandalama, a luxury resort with views facing the forest and reservoir, and Bawa’s estate in Lunuganga in the coastal town of Bentota.

The couple likewise visited Bawa’s home and office in Colombo where they saw the contrast between the compactness of city living and the scenic sprawl in the countryside.

Delos Reyes noted down elements that were distinctly Bawa’s, mainly the combination of local materials integrated into modern design and construction, adapted to the tropical climate.

During the lockdowns, the workers quarantined in the house and completed the construction by October 2020.

Standing on a 391-square-meter lot, the three-bedroom, three-story house has a total floor area of 420 sq m. The gym, office and play area on the third floor can be transformed into different spaces in the future.

Delos Reyes says the spaces in bedrooms are adequate enough for the bed, storage and shelving.

Skylight

The architect notes that his interpretation of Bawa’s style is not literal. While Bawa managed to build an interior courtyard to facilitate light and ventilation in his city home, Delos Reyes designed a central skylight roofing so that sunbeams would flood the house. The kitchen, bathroom and service areas have their own skylights as well.

To diffuse the heat from the skylights, he studied the direction of the wind to determine the placement of the main windows and vents.

Delos Reyes noted that Bawa used woods and raw concrete prodigiously and eschewed commercial tiles and porcelain.

“Concrete is economical and easy to repaint. All the floors, even in the bedrooms, are made of concrete,” he says. The roughness of concrete highlights the patina of the woods.

Building on a budget, he sourced century-old doors salvaged from ancestral homes and adjusted the openings to fit them. “I like the old nails and hinge marks that add character,” he adds.

Antique capiz windows were repurposed into doors of the bathroom cabinets. Architectural salvages were repurposed into beams and door frames.

Delos Reyes recalls that when they toured Lunuganga, a structure for the living room floor had a concrete floor painted with a checkerboard pattern. For the house, he used handmade cement patterned tiles produced by the Machuca family, the fourth-generation maker of decorative Spanish tiles.

The façade was loosely based on the British colonial architecture in Malaysia, characterized by symmetry, pilasters, balconies and a pitched roof.

Storage was one his priorities. In the living room, a hollow concrete built-in bench also serves as a storage for seasonal decorations.

Doting on his wife, he says, “I made sure Nicole had a walk-in closet, which is the anteroom between the bedroom and bathroom. Ample provisions were made for shelving the clothes and accessories and a bench to reach the high shelves.

An avid reader, Nicole has a library with generous built-in shelves for her books and a cozy corner with a secretaire desk and a built-in banquette.

Yani’s play area became the classroom when school classes were online. Shelves allowed her to organize her things.

Timeless style

Because the house was planned before the pandemic, Delos Reyes anticipated that they would be commuting together to Makati. He designed dual lavatories, toilets, vanity areas and showers so that one didn’t have to wait for the other.

Even in a hybrid work situation, he finds the design convenient. “There are no conflicts because we can use the bathroom at the same time,” he says.

His home is his first attempt in designing the interiors. The white palette is soothing to the eyes and serves as a background for the different textures of the surfaces. Muted colors from the upholstery added depth without breaking the minimalist palette. Stronger colors such as robin’s-egg blue in the walk-in closet gave the space more visual impact.

He preferred the timeless transitional style wherein modern pieces blended with their personal antiques, family heirlooms and neoclassic European furniture.

The architecture isn’t commonplace. A young architect would normally choose a contemporary style for a family but Delos Reyes looked to the past for romance.

“I purposely wanted something that had a reference to an older time,” he says. “It will age more gracefully.” —CONTRIBUTED