ArchShowcase 
Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. The Shadow House in Mumbai, India by Samira Rathod Design AssociatesJune 4th, 2017 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Samira Rathod Design Associates Set on the foothills of Maharashtra in Alibaug, far away from the busy city life of Mumbai. The plot was a dry barren piece of parched earth. When I first saw it, there were two lonely trees; a view of the hills in the distance and dry fields all the way to the sky, all around. In that scorching heat, there was only one desire- to be lulled back into that familiar dark, cold, calmness.  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner
 Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner The courtyard house of southern India does this well, with its overarching low slung roofs and a central courtyard around which the rooms surround. The idea of the house began here. This house is carefully sited between the two trees, grazing its walls into its crown; its three bedrooms, and living spaces surround an half bounded courtyard with a sliver that opens into a small plunge pool; indigo blue water, that spouts out gushing waters. Its sounds making for cooling delight.  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner The courtyard is marked with a the babul tree for shade, which as it would grow would engulf its entire space and suffuse the house with its blazing fragrance and a confetti of tiny white flowers every morning. Architecturally the courtyard doesn’t open to spaces, but instead, to a broad corridor that works like a woody bridge holding a study, under a sweeping corten steel roof and ties all the upper rooms into a single floor.  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner But the sun is unforgiving; its screeching light needed to be quietened with shade and shadows. From here, emerged the language of its tectonics, both for its architecture and landscape. As one enters the house, the long walk from where the car leaves you, in between walls of tall grasses brushes against the skin, and a carpet of rolling green mounds that form a seamless edge to the site.  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner The house is conceived in shredded layers, as it unravels spaces, each rendered in a different intonation of light. The first of its layers, on the southern side, is a thick, dead, colored concrete wall -a heavy thermal curtain to ward off the heat. The second layer is the corten steel pitched roof over the woody bridge, holding the study area with windows like piano keys, alluding to old homes in the hills of Northern India.  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner The stairs and its sliced wooden railings, the bridge held by the steel portals the accordion windows of the living room, legs of tables, the flooring patterns, and soft cotton sheers, all form a larger subset of overlapping layers. Its every element is designed and detailed as if to obstruct light; shredded. The house is designed like a sieve through which light is filtered, dappled and draped into its hollows.  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner The architecture is crafted as art, where conventional modes of building thought are deviated to deride the predictable strict geometries that are attached to impressive architecture. The entire flooring, in contrary to orthogonal patterned alignments to the building, is worked upon like a feely painted canvas with various pigmented handmade concrete tiles.  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner  Image Courtesy © Edmund Sumner Light from the skylights slash the walls, painted in shades of brown. The living experience is designed to be gentle; dark, quiet and erotic, with its hierarchy of volumes and spatial textures. Steel, concrete and wood are choreographed to manufacture shadows and intrigue.  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates  Image Courtesy © Samira Rathod Design Associates
Contact Samira Rathod Design Associates
Categories: House, Residential |
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
|||||
email
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed
