-
Architects: UA Design
- Area: 3620 ft²
- Year: 2020
-
Photographs:Ira, PHX India
-
Manufacturers: Saint-Gobain, Daikin, Futura Lights, Himani Shah, Jaquar, Laxmi Elevators, Narania, The Window Factory
-
Lead Architects: Umang Goswami
Text description provided by the architects. Spanning three generations, the clients are a joint family that grew up in the old city of Ahmedabad. They now wanted a new, modern house for the growing family. Although most of their neighbours were moving to newer neighbourhoods, our clients were sure they didn’t want to be uprooted. This made the architect’s role very clear - to build a modern house that embodied the old city’s spirit.
The old city of Ahmedabad has an intangible warmth about it, which manifests both in its built form and the community culture. The entire neighbourhood is like an extended family. Play House attempts to recreate this warmth, both in how the inhabitants interact with the house and how the house interacts with the street. This four-storey residence is built on a plot of 150 sq. metres. It is conceived as a stack of shifting floor plates that enjoy a playful chemistry with each other. The ground serves as a seamless family room with a living, dining, kitchen and an open to sky sit-out. The three floors above function as private & independent units for their users.
The East edge of the plot is inclined. Alternating the inclined and straight axes on the Eastern façade, from ground to the terrace, produced a staggered massing. The North or front façade is designed to make the house a friendly intervention in the street. The entrance elements – wall and gate - become a sculpture for passers-by. The stone etching borrows from the geometric compositions of paintings of Raza, a modern master.
Since it’s a small piece of land, the building footprint had to be maximised. The living room is almost on the street, with a very thin buffer from its busy and noisy activities. To create a sound buffer, the front is a thick solid wall. The horizontal slit windows under the ceiling capture only the best parts of the outdoors – the sky and the lush green tops of trees. These windows allow one’s gaze to travel beyond the boundaries of the house, creating a sense of seamlessness and spaciousness. The staircase block with large windows is placed in the south west, where the sun peaks. This placement is ideal as the stairwell allows the afternoon heat to travel upwards and escape at the terrace. The staircase’s material palette of black granite and dark hardwood absorb excess glare and reflect soft ambient light into the house all through the day, without heating them up.
The ground floor material palette comprises of hardwood furniture against exposed concrete walls, kota stone and black granite floor and accents of yellow back-painted glass on storage shutters. The palette upstairs borrows from traditional materials, featuring handmade glazed tiles, terrazzo, back painted glass and hardwood. The available size of black granite did not span the entire width of the staircase in one tile. In response, the edges of the concrete treads and risers are left unfinished, adding visual interest to the space.
The window system on the East façade is inspired by traditional wooden windows typical of this region. The double height living room is a modern take on the internal courtyards of vernacular family homes. The house also features vintage elements like a hanging bed, swing, an Indian diwan seating and a modern jharokha. From the beginning a spirit of playfulness was at the heart of the design process. Like its owners, this house celebrates life - with every corner, every moment and every act becoming an act of play!
