The Tiger Mansion 寅居

Taman Sutera, Johor Bahru – 新山五福城市

My house at Taman Sutera – The Tiger Mansion 寅居
In mid 2002, I came to a small suburban town in western Johor Bahru in southern Malaysia, it was just for a casual siteseeing; I visited a newly designed sample house at a new residential town known as Taman Sutera. It was the only type of dwelling built with a complete open space at the top level known as the Roof-top Garden dwelling. Hence, there was no standard triangular type roof on top of the house. It was such a good idea as the inhabitances do not have to live under a large triangle on top like the Tomb of King Tutankhamun … 2 weeks later I bought one of the mid terrace units and moved into this new mansion in December 2002, I name this new house “The Tiger Mansion 寅居”…

I met one of my students whom was a landscape designer, his advice was to cover the complete roof top with carpet grass and design it into an open air roof top garden …but I do not think that it is a good idea, as the living do not live beneath grass or plants … 活人不宜居于草地下…

The frontage has the look of the face of a tiger … 寅居的前面有虎相造型

The middle section of the roof top is designed with a golden crown metal grill. This is to avoid the sinking middle section with 2 shoulders like wall section protruding upwards making them higher than the sinking middle section. The crown grill also represents the Chinese word “王” which means “king“. The word was derived from the pattern at the forehead of a tiger. “王”字来至于虎额的纹型.

12 boxed windows representing the left hand fingers and palm, the main door is the thumb, the low wall divider in front of the main door is an elbow blocking 2 pillars and the main door of the house opposite, these combinations form the defending stunt of TaiJi …