Inside Malaysia’s Smallest House | Romantic Villa House tour | Tiny Garden Home
“Well when I first came to the site I thought, ‘Wow’,” Inch Lim recalls, struck by the presence of enormous trees in the garden. “It’s very comfortable — I’ll be quite happy to live in a house like that when I get old… which I’m not yet.”
The Smallest Home on Design Seed
Today’s article unveils the smallest home ever featured on the site.
The idea began in 2017, when Jamaliah Hamdan was planning her daughter’s wedding. What started as a vision for a romantic honeymoon villa soon found its place on a hillside overlooking Sungai Langat, located in Pekan Batu 18, about 29 kilometres east of Kuala Lumpur.
A Pavilion on the Hillside
The selected site requires a short but strenuous climb, leading to a relatively level plateau. The plan of the single-storey pavilion is intentionally unpretentious — a linear space just 3.6 metres wide, opening into a semi-walled garden.
A series of still ponds and four gentle waterfalls create a soft, continuous sound of running water, forming a calm and almost soporific environment.
The home itself consists of an intimate living and dining space, a romantic bed chamber, and an open-to-sky bathroom set beneath the forest canopy, alongside a cantilevered east-facing balcony.
From Garden to Home
“The client wanted me to make a garden,” Inch Lim, garden designer, explains. “I said no, no, no, no — you don’t need a garden. You need a house and a garden.”
Because without a place to stay, he adds, “you never come here.” But with a comfortable house, you wake up in the morning to the garden.
Describing his approach, Inch shares that he often thinks outside the box while still drawing from classical landscape principles. “My name is Inch… I design things for a living,” he says simply.
A Choreographed Arrival
A processional route circles north, arriving at the plateau before turning to approach the house from the west. Stepping through a timber door, a bench sits quietly to one side, while the view opens up to a “borrowed landscape” of mountains to the east.
Inch carefully choreographs movement through the space — guiding visitors along watercourses, across shallow platforms, and into the living space through a sliding timber door and a short flight of steps.
Living Within the Landscape
Inside, the home continues this romantic sequence.
From the living and dining area overlooking the garden, the space flows into a bed chamber with a four-poster bed, and finally into an outdoor bathroom beneath the forest canopy.
The cantilevered verandah extends outward, creating a shaded platform that feels as though it floats within the jungle. The villa is carefully oriented to face cascading greenery while avoiding direct sunlight, ensuring a consistently cool and pleasant atmosphere.
The bedroom, surrounded by lush planting, remains private, shaded, and intentionally intimate — a setting designed to feel both cozy and romantic.
An Open Sky Bath
At the end of the layout sits one of the villa’s most iconic features: an open-to-sky bathtub.
Framed by a high gable roof and surrounded by tall tropical trees, the space is softly lit and deeply connected to nature.
Reflecting on traditional building methods, Inch notes that pitched roofs were often more practical. “The rain runs off, the leaves fall off,” he says — a simple but effective response to the tropical climate.
Built from Memory
The structure itself came together in a serendipitous way.
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Back to the story:
Inch discovered an abandoned sawmill in Johor and suggested repurposing its timber. Originally used to construct a wedding hall, the remaining materials — trusses, beams, rafters, and cladding — were transported and integrated into the pavilion.
The visible bolt holes reveal the timber’s past life, while doors are also crafted from the same reclaimed material.
“I always find that old timber is better,” Inch explains, noting that it has already gone through its natural expansion and contraction. While recycled timber can be more difficult to work with — especially with hidden nails — it results in something far more unique.
“It makes it a very special project… a project that cannot be repeated again.”
Designing with Nature
The garden reflects Jamaliah’s growing interest in biophilia — the therapeutic connection between humans and nature.
Inspired by Geoffrey Bawa’s philosophy to “never chop down a tree… always move the building,” the design preserves the existing trees, allowing them to define the space.
“It will take a long time before you can get a tree like this again,” Inch explains.
Light becomes a key consideration. Too much shade from tall trees can prevent plants from growing, so the house is carefully slotted between them, leaving open areas for the garden to thrive.
“My plants need morning sun,” he says. “If it was afternoon sun, it wouldn’t be the same.”
Water, Light, and Intimacy
The garden is structured through walls, doors, and hedges to create a sense of intimacy.
Water plays a dual role — directing views and shaping experience. From the top, the cascading water draws the eye toward the hill, while also creating a calming soundscape.
The flow begins as a gentle spring, moving slowly enough to reflect the surrounding trees, before cascading down into a final pond.
“The trick,” Inch explains, “is to tune the height and volume of water — so you get the sound, but not too much of it.”
A Life in Design
“I’m getting old,” Inch says lightly, “and I want to have something to work on… till I’m 99.”
For him, that means continuing to garden, to design, and to remain connected to the process.
A Piece of Heaven
Known as Villa Sang Turi, the home offers a sense of tranquility through its composition of stone, water, and lush planting.
At dawn, within the walled garden, the experience becomes almost surreal — mist lifting over blue-green hills, butterflies and birds moving through the space, and a quiet stillness that invites reflection.
Jamaliah describes it as “a piece of heaven.”
The Value of a Creative Life
Reflecting on the journey, Inch shares a final thought:
“We designers are such fortunate people. You have a dream… and somebody else pays for you to bring that dream down and actualise it.”
“It’s amazing,” he says. “You may not be rich — but you have a rich life without being rich.”
If you enjoyed this article, check out this story on this tropical luxury house with a garden on every level.
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