Rainforest canopy, with the small Ngapuh Nest shelter among the trees

Protect habitats.
Build new ones.

Archigardener is an architecture and master planning practice for the tropics, worldwide. It designs buildings, landscapes and whole districts that keep the habitat a site already has, and build new habitat into the structure.

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What Archigardener stands for

Exclusivity is a vital connection to nature

Archigardener creates spaces that intertwine human life with untamed nature, and keeps that nature alive by saving the rainforest, for ourselves.

Five rules for every project

  1. Nature is the luxury

    City and wild nature can live side by side. Access to living landscapes is the real luxury.

  2. Keep what lives there

    Each project starts with the habitat a site already has: the forest, the soil, an old building. The design keeps it.

  3. Grow more

    New habitat is built into the structure. The places are green in fact, and sustainable at their core.

  4. Inside and outside as one

    Indoors and outdoors blur, where urban design, architecture, interiors and landscape meet.

  5. No fixed style

    No set form or style. Each design comes from the site, its culture, the client's ambitions and the brief.

Looking up through the timber roof frame of Ngapuh Nest into the forest canopy

A response to megacities and vanishing nature

Preserving the planet's lungs is a personal and collective privilege, not a distant ideal

From the ground up

The rules work at every scale, from one room to a district, and always in the same order. First the ground. Then the building. Then the materials and the people. Then the whole place.

Underneath is systems thinking. Soil, water, plants, buildings and people work as one system, so each part of a design is tested against the whole: where the rain goes, what gives shade, what feeds whom, how people move.

Concept sketch: a timber post on a light foundation, and a habitat roof of timber poles and branches

First, the ground

Touch the ground lightly

Near living forest, the first job is to disturb as little as possible. Ngapuh Nest lifts off the ground, so the forest floor carries on underneath it, and its roof becomes a habitat too.

Ngapuh Nest →
Climbers growing up a steel and glass frame

Then, the building

In the tropics, the plants shelter the glass

In a cold climate a greenhouse keeps plants warm. Near the equator the relationship reverses: climbers on the frame shade the glass, and the building blends into the green around it.

Canine Community Club in an inverted greenhouse →
The boutique hotel in Padang beside the old bank building

Then, the materials

Start with what is already there

In Padang, the ruined annex of a Dutch bank of 1908 becomes a small hotel covered in plants, and the new part defers to the old building. Old walls, local earth and reclaimed timber come first.

Boutique Heritage Hotel →

Then, the people

Give back what a place lacks

Dogs are kept out of most public spaces in Malaysia, so many never swim or run free. At BarkPark, a private dog park in Kuching, a terraced pool gives dogs somewhere to climb, leap and swim. Next door, the Canine Community Club gives their people a cool place to meet.

Pool Terrace for Dogs and Humans →
Aerial view of a terraced pool for dogs under shade sails
Render of the Essential Oil Research Centre, a building of planted terraces

All at once, as one system

A building that becomes a hill

The Essential Oil Research Centre in West Sumatra, on site since July 2025, brings the rules together as one system. Planted terraces rise like contour lines, tropical herbs grow just outside the labs that process them, and rain falls through the middle of the building into a stepwell.

Essential Oil Research Centre →

Then, the whole place

A plan drawn with a village

Around Ngapuh Nest, a draft master plan made with a Bidayuh village keeps the canopy and the forest floor whole. Trails link the lodge, the village and the river, cleared land is replanted, and small raised buildings are added piece by piece.

Future Ngapuh →
Hand-drawn planning vision over an aerial photo of the rainforest: reforestation, the lodge, the workshop and trails to the village, the dam and the river
Aerial render of a forested hilltop above a tropical coast

A town without cars

On a hilltop above Costa Rica's tropical coast, a car-free community puts nature before roads. Homes cluster close together, so the forest stays, and a permaculture farm sits at its heart.

Car-free community, Costa Rica →
Planters on the Rooftop Urban Farm in Singapore

Where it began

“A little green space can contribute to the overall health of natural ecosystems in the city!”

Jonathan Choe, founder, on the Rooftop Urban Farm at WOHA in Singapore, where wild birds brought in new plants from nearby parks

Where you can see it

Each project is an example of the same rules. Newest first, then three highlights from the founder's years at WOHA.

All projects, in time order →Works is the second part of the story

From a balcony to a district

Start with an hour and a half online, a pre-feasibility study, or a free call about your project. The scale changes. The rule does not: keep what lives there, and grow more.

Let's talk

Quick advice in a Design Consultation, three schemes for your project in a pre-feasibility study, or a free first call about your project. Bookable at any hour, on a phone.

Let's talkHow it works