Maps Design Studio

Maps is led by principals Tan Hock Beng and Maria Hartati. With studios in Singapore and Bangkok, the practice’s portfolio has always been broad-based in its geographic breadth, with projects currently spread over some 93 cities across 26 countries.

Maps is known for its ability to generate clever design solutions for vastly varied cultural contexts. The firm provides master planning, architectural and interior design services for many project types, with a keen emphasis on hotels and resorts. It works with top luxury hotel brands like Hyatt, W, St Regis, Sheraton, JW Marriott, Shangri-La, Pan Pacific, Pullman, Nira, InterContinental and Anantara.

Specifically, its commitment to seeing architecture as part of a larger continuum of design and environmental issues has marked how it approaches the creative process. Throughout each project, the firm’s overarching thesis focuses on an empathetic sensitivity to space, while striving to imbue the work with an understated layer of meaning. Its portfolio has always been implicitly marked by modesty and explicitly concerned with spatiality.

Maps believes that design is “intelligence made visible”. Design is all about being inclusive yet projective; in the process, exploring spatial enclosures of joyful sensuality — those unique amalgam of qualities that make architecture perpetually invigorating.

portfolio

Maps Design Studio reinvigorates this bungalow in Holland two decades after it first conceptualised it

Some 23 years ago, a two-storey, L-shaped bungalow was built atop one of the high points of the hilly Holland neighbourhood. Lived in by a family of four, it was conceptualised by Maps Design Studio and bore the aesthetic of a tropical resort that the practice is known for. Fast forward two decades and the same team was assembled and tasked to give the house a makeover. Interestingly, while the assumption was that the brief would involve restructuring it to become a multi-generation home, it was in fact the opposite – to redesign it to accommodate the owners who have retired and enjoy entertaining. “Now that their kids are all grown up with their own families, the house has fewer occupants. The project therefore became about how to reinvigorate the house,” says Tan Hock Beng, Principal of Maps. In addition to replacing many of the building materials with newer, longer lasting ones, a two-storey block was added. The façade designs were also updated, with one section being expanded with rectilinear protrusions to create more liveable space. The major thing that…