This Bangsar plot offered the family two options: flatten the hillside and build a conventional home, or design with the slope as a co-author. They chose the second. The house thanks them every day.
The brief
A young family of four had bought a steeply sloped plot in an established Bangsar street. The previous owners had marketed the slope as a problem. Several architects the family consulted had agreed and proposed substantial earthworks. Our reading was different. The slope was the gift, not the obstacle.
The brief asked for a home that would feel cohesive across multiple levels, where the children’s rooms would be near the parents but not adjacent, and where the garden would be in active use rather than ceremonial.
The design strategy
Live with the slope, level by level
We organised the house across four half-levels rather than two full ones, with the changes in level following the natural slope. The principal living space sits at the middle elevation, with the garden falling gently away on one side and rising gently on the other. From most rooms, you are aware of the slope without being inconvenienced by it.
One material, several treatments
The slope’s complexity asked for visual coherence. We held to a single primary material — a warm-toned local stone — used across exterior cladding, principal interior floors, and several wall moments. The treatment varies from rough-faced exterior to honed interior, but the family of material reads as continuous from the street to the bedrooms.
Plan the garden as a sequence
Hillside plots can produce gardens that are technically present but functionally unused. We designed this garden as a sequence of three terraced rooms — a herb and vegetable garden near the kitchen, a play lawn at mid-level, a quieter sitting terrace at the lowest level with views back up to the house. The family uses all three.
Materials
A restrained palette built around the local stone. Malaysian merbau for the external timber decking and feature staircases. Brushed bronze hardware. Linen drapery and natural-fibre rugs throughout. The kitchen island is a single book-matched quartzite slab in a warm grey-brown that picks up the stone of the house.
What we are proudest of
Six months after handover, the parents took us through the house and pointed out where each child had decided to sit, read, and play. Both children had chosen rooms different from the ones their parents had imagined for them. The house had been generous enough to let them choose.
Hillside houses can feel imposed on their plots. This one feels invited.
Project facts
- Location: Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur
- Plot size: ~7,200 sq ft, sloped
- Built area: ~5,800 sq ft over four half-levels
- Project type: New build, hillside plot
- Timeline: 16 months from concept to handover
- Designed by: Designed Design Associates
Working with DDA
If you are weighing a hillside plot in Bangsar, Damansara Heights, or anywhere in the Klang Valley, and would like a designer’s view of what the slope will allow, we would be glad to hear from you.