Teras Karawang Boarding House

Karawang city as one supporting city nearest to Jakarta, has become a fast developing industrial city with big manufacturing companies and home industries. Along with the fast development of the city, the demand of housing and rental living space in Karawang is also rapidly growing, coping with the nature of commuter workers from other cities. A loyal client sees this opportunity and asked the architect to design a boarding house in a plot of land that is located in the heart of Karawang Barat, near the alun-alun. The site sits in an old district, surrounded by 1940’s neighbouring houses. The architect later decided to demolish the existing weathered house, and keep a big old tree at front of the site to be incorporated into the new design.

The new design is a medium scale building consists of 3 blocks, with adjoining inner courtyards in between. The inner courtyards are set in a certain distance, providing a soothing green view to each bedroom without loosing privacy, and at the same time act as wind tunnels to each block. The 37-bedrooms with private and semi-private bathrooms are all connected with shaded open-air corridor. Series of breeze-block-walls and openings at the corridor, stairways and voids, maximize cool airflow into the building and let out hot air as soon as possible. This passive cooling design is to achieve the architecture that survives through the harsh hot humid climate of Karawang, whilst serves as a comfortable living space for the tenants.

The design is lastly finished with an elevated wide metal roof at top of the front block and playful arrangement of tinted glass windows on the clean facades, to convey a modern impression of the boarding house.