Singapore combines tight floor areas, constant humidity and unusually strict regulation. It rewards precision and punishes improvisation.
Condominium apartments, shophouse conversions, landed houses, and workspace and retail fit-outs.
Humidity is relentless and mould is the enemy — ventilation, breathable finishes and materials that tolerate damp matter more than in almost any other market. Floor area is expensive, so joinery carries the storage and the plan has to be efficient without feeling mean. Shophouse conversions come with conservation constraints on facade and structure that shape everything behind them.
Regulatory approvals and building management requirements are strict and non-negotiable. Drawings need to be resolved and compliant before work starts, which suits how the studio prefers to operate anyway.
Working across a distance is exactly where BIM earns its keep. The project is modelled and coordinated in three dimensions before anything is ordered, so joinery, services and finishes are resolved against one another rather than on site, quantities come off the model, and a local contractor can build from drawings that leave nothing to interpretation.
NYKS is a turnkey studio: the same people who draw the room are accountable for the room that gets built — design, artisan commissioning, procurement, site execution and handover. We do not take styling-only engagements. More about the studio and how it works is on the about page.
Where a project needs them, we bring in specialists by niche — a landscape designer when the garden is part of the architecture, a lighting designer when the room depends on how it is lit, MEP consultants so services are engineered rather than accommodated, and IT and AV consultants where the space has to be genuinely intelligent. Their work is coordinated in BIM against ours, so everything agrees on the drawing before it has to agree on site.
Through BIM and resolved documentation. The room is modelled in three dimensions and coordinated before work starts, so the specification a local contractor receives is unambiguous. Site presence is scheduled around the decisive stages rather than spread thin.
Yes. Conservation constraints on facade and structure are treated as the starting point rather than an obstacle — the existing fabric is usually the most valuable thing on site.
Ventilation planned rather than assumed, breathable finishes, and materials chosen to tolerate constant damp without mould.
It is a discipline. Spatial utilisation is the core of how the studio works — every division of space has to earn its purpose.
Drawings are resolved and compliant before mobilising, and building management requirements are built into the programme.