Out of the Box

The 1200sqft corner site presented us with the classic urban scenario. The site was abutted by houses on two sides and flanked by low income housing on the other two sides. The question thus posed to us was, “What would be the relationship of the dwelling to the outside?” The stand taken by us was to incorporate the ‘outside’ inside while the building shuns the surroundings. A classic diagram of this would be the traditional courtyard house. Taking this classic diagram we moved the court to the corner to create new spatial and formal effects. By moving the court to the fourth quadrant of the square we could magnify the boundaries of each program flanking the court i.e. the living room, the dining and the bedrooms would not only feel much bigger but also would have sectional relationship with the open to sky court. The court is further articulated by placing a sculptural element that would serve as an informal dining area as well as a tub for housing a tree. The jali wall cast in-situ completes the fourth corner to accentuate the experience of the court.

This idea of the elevation was to have a customized jali of wall with a pattern of openings which fade away to form the platonic cube. A fiber glass mould of size 2’x2’ was made to cast the concrete tiles; the thickness of this tile was 100mm.

The mould had a set of 4 oval openings; these openings were then filled up according to the pattern to achieve the desired variation.

The tiles were stacked up like a conventional brick wall to construct the wall. These tiles were reinforced with metal flats to ensure stability.

Corner open-to-sky court
All the spaces with programme open into the court
Hence the boundaries of these spaces are extended
Garden sculpture - this is made in brick and cement. The sculpture houses a tree and extends to form a table for four.

Thus the building while negating the outside environment simultaneously houses the ‘outside’ inside.

Mr. Phalgun

Smaran Mallesh, Vikram Rajashekhar, Narendra Pirgal

Structural engineer: Mr. Manjunath
Constructional engineer: Mr. Narasimha. B.S