Tube House

A house is a place where one spends almost half of his life time. It is a place where one creates a bond with his family. It is place where one finds peace after a hectic day at work. It is a place to contemplate about ones’ social being. Most of the towns and cities in India have a central core which is congested in nature. These core city areas are predominantly mixed use with shops on ground floor and residential use above. This mix of use makes the neighbourhood safe and active throughout the day. The congested nature of space in these buildings no longer serves the modern lifestyle of the expanding families. Also, most of the constructions being older people either rebuild the entire house or move out to other parts of the city to cater to their changing needs, latter being more affordable. This is resulting in core cities becoming entirely commercial in nature.
This project is an attempt to give people the desired space quality in the same building without rebuilding it or moving out of the core city area. This helps in safeguarding their associational value with the place and does not disconnect their social and economic connection with their neighbourhood. This model of renovation of residential and commercial spaces with minimal structural changes if repeated in the core city will have a larger impact by providing better quality of space to the residents and help in making if vibrant and lively.
The house in discussion is owned by a doctor and sits on a linear piece of land of size 30m x 5m in the old part of Baramati. It is open only on the front and the rear sides with shared walls on the sides. The existing form of the house is a framed construction with different spaces aligned to each other in a linear fashion. These spaces are divided by service ducts and a staircase in the centre. This four storeyed structure houses a clinic and a 15 bedded hospital on the first two floors and residential use on the remaining floors. The linear planning of habitable spaces has led to bad natural lighting conditions leading to users being dependent on artificial light throughout the day. The linear form also created lengthy passages to access its various spaces.
The design brief from the client mentioned only an essential renovation of the space to create a new and fresh look and feel. After detailed understanding of the spaces and the lifestyle of the users, the design team decided not to do a regular renovation but to create flexible spaces with open planning to get more light inside the structure, getting rid of existing stark division of floors and provide a feel of a bungalow for the second and third floor. The brief included transformation of third floor residential space for the owner couple, second floor residential space for son and daughter in law who will visit once a month on one side and for aged parents on the other, clinic on the part ground floor and terrace on top for recreational purpose. This demanded getting rid of few partitions walls and making some structural changes in the ceiling. The client being open to this idea the transformation of the house focussed on reducing the internal divisions on all floors and creating a hierarchy of public, semi public and private spaces in the house.
The design is inspired by the idea of minimalism with use of materials in their purest form. The lifestyle of the client being simple the entire design challenge was to maintain simplicity of spaces yet making them dynamic in nature. The visual simplicity is maintained through use of whites with contrasting Kota flooring making it a complementary scheme. The Kota stone is not only used in the flooring but also to highlight the horizontal lines to enhance the space. The entire interior space and its elements follows uniform proportions at 700, 1400, 2100 & 2800 (all in mm) levels from the finished floor which creates a visual harmony.
The design recognizes light not only as an element but as a natural material for space making. The living and dining spaces on the third floor have been converted to double height spaces to enhance the space quality with natural light. This intervention ensures penetration of daylight into all spaces until 7 o’clock in the evening. Service spaces like toilets and kitchen utility have also been provided with skylights to reduce burden on natural lighting during the day. Although the design focus is on the interior space potted plants have been carefully planned inside and on the terrace besides the two double height spaces to add nature into the surroundings. Thoughtful seating spaces have been provided along the front and the rear sides to create a dialogue with the outside environment yet being inside. The spaces have been designed with open plan approach on the third floor with only the bedroom been provided with a door for maintaining privacy. The rest of the space including living room, kitchen and dining area creates a flow within itself keeping the public and semi-public nature of spaces intact.
The success of the project lies in simplicity in design, choice of materials and use of natural light to transform an old linear horizontally divided structure into a cohesive unit.