Materials Before Floor Plans

Most design studios start a project with a floor plan. Forma House starts with a table covered in raw material samples: a slab of travertine, a tray of aggregate for board-formed concrete, three different batches of lime plaster mixed to slightly different tones. Founder Isabelle Chen says the studio has worked this way since it opened in 2012, and has no plans to change.

• Forma House begins every project with physical material samples, not a mood board.
• The approach demands more from clients upfront but tends to age better.
• Senior designer Aravind Kumar says it changed how he approaches design entirely.

A material board, not a mood board

"A mood board tells you what something should look like. A material board tells you what it actually is," Chen says. "You can't fake the way travertine catches light, or how concrete feels at ten in the morning versus six at night, from a Pinterest image. You have to have the material in the room."

That process shaped the studio's recent work on the Bukit Timah Landed House, where board-formed concrete, timber and glass were left largely undressed rather than covered with finishes. Chen says the approach demands more from clients upfront, since it is harder to sell a swatch of raw concrete than a rendered image of a finished room, but tends to produce interiors that age better because nothing was chosen purely for how it would photograph on day one.

How it changes a designer's habits

Senior designer Aravind Kumar, who joined the studio in 2018, says the material-first process changed how he thinks about design entirely. "Everywhere else I worked, materials got picked at the end to match a look you'd already committed to. Here the material comes first and the space gets built around what it actually wants to do. It's a slower way to start a project, but I don't think I could go back to doing it the other way."