Architects: Studio Mumbai
Location: Nandgaon, Maharashtra, India
Principal Architect: Bijoy Jain
Project Team: Jeevaram Sutar, Roy Katz, Mangesh Mhatre, Samuel Barclay
Project Year: 2007
Photographs: Helene Binet
Located outside of Mumbai on the Arabian Sea, Palmyra House was built as a refuge from the bustle of the busy city. The 3000 sq ft. house consists of two wooden louvered structures set inside of a functioning coconut plantation. Anchored to stone platforms, the structures overlook a network of wells and aqueducts that weave the site into an inhabitable whole. Living room, study and master bedroom are contained in the north volume, while the south volume contains the kitchen, dining, and guest bedrooms. Set in the plaza between the buildings, the pool provides a channel for swimming, with expansive views of the sea to the west and views into a dense foliage of palms to the east.
Structural framing for the house was built of ain wood, a local hardwood, and was constructed using traditional interlocking joinery. The extensive louvres were handcrafted from the outer part of the palmyra trunk (a local palm species). Exteriors are detailed with hand-worked copper flashing and standing seam aluminum roofs; interior surfaces are finished with teakwood and India Patent Stone, a refined pigmented plaster. Locally quarried black basalt was used to construct the stone plinths, aqueduct walls and pool plaza.
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Helene Binet
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- © Courtesy of Studio Mumbai
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- © Courtesy of Studio Mumbai
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- © Courtesy of Studio Mumbai
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- site plan
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- site section
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- ground floor plan
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- first floor plan
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- section
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- exploded axo
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- sketch 01
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- sketch 02
This really does deserve a wow!!!… I can smell the exotic Indian hardwood from here
A building that so respects its context and the environmental conditions is rare.
It’s lightness cools you and touches the ground with a refreshing brevity. W should all build more local architecture…
I would love to be sitting in there right now enjoying the cross-breeze, sipping a mango lassi, and looking at the beach. Well done guys!
Excellent!!
damn nice project. Extremely well done arch mate!!
Nice detailes, well done joints.
Nice work!
Many congratulations on a very fine building, a building that is beautifully resolved and made. a building that sits so effortlessly and modestly amongst those trees. Who could not imagine wandering barefoot through those shadowed spaces?
Dusty. At the end of the day this place is most likely uninhabitable. It must have 2 inches of dust.
Not too dusty, its a vacation house, when there are no occupants, a dust screen is hung inside the louvers to keep the cross breeze out.
nice work