Secret Garden

At first, you barely make out the architecture. A thick, green cloud of plants hangs over the house’s front. Only slight partings in the leaves revealing mustard paint suggests a built form. You see first a gate, simply made with slim metal bars and whose sea foam colour has aged. And then, your gaze distracts to the driveway’s unexpected zigzag pattern made from an assortment of gravel-unexpected because who would give artistic thought to something as rudimentary as a driveway?

A ‘hello’ sounds out from a figure in the shadows behind a vintage Volkswagen, parked at the end of the graphical pathway. As I walk in, trees and bushes wall my sides like an arbour. The deep, warm timbre belongs to Mohan Shanmugam, who lives here with his wife and younger son Marcus. Mohan and Marcus are architects, and the house was designed in part by both. While father and son work in different local firms, here is where they experiment together with space, light, material and nature. The waifish Marcus appears and invites me to sit at the outdoor courtyard. It is a space between the original house at the rear and a front