Project Name: HouseC162

Architecture and Interior design

Plot area: 200sq yds

Completed in 2016

Design Team : Vikas Gandhi, Gauri S Gandhi, Rajan Grover

Client : Dhalls

Photography and Text by Saptarshi Sanyal

A west-facing plot for the single-family home prompted a design response that incorporates the front façade into its interior articulation. The same formal language, with the linear texture of timber taking precedence in its architecture, unites contrasting concepts of shading and the diffused internal natural illumination. A three-storied light well achieves the connection amongst all living floors, although the house is planned for future expansion internally across the upper storeys. The degree of perforation varies geometrically, with relatively solid base encasing circular glazed openings, while semi-open areas, into which the staggered screen is integrated, achieve the screening of living spaces. This provides the necessary privacy, diffuses the direct sun, as well as serves as the building’s primary visual identity. Clues from this overarching tectonic language of a sinuous form in wood pushes past traditional geometries of the material, breaking the dominant verticality of the volume through segregated planes. It, further,ties together the principal elements of the interior, such as the staircase, lobbies, skylight and furniture. This enables the spatial feel of movement and textures against only plain plaster finish, in a frugality of the material palette, but richness of a lived experience.