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'SOUL GARDEN'
- Rohini Gomez Braganza
- September 14, 2020
- 8:19 am
ARTICLE CONTENTS
PROJECT SPECIFICATIONS
Project name: Soul garden
Project Type: Residential
Year of Completion: 2019
Site Area: 170 sqm
Built Area: 3900 sq.ft.
Project location: Hyderabad, India
Architecture Firm: Spacefiction Studio
Design Team: Anusha Dasari
Photo credits: Monika Sathe Photography
Engineering: Raghavendra (ALONUM Design)
Landscape: Green Leaf Landscape
Fabricator: Fabtech
Tucked away into a miniature suburban plot is a contemporary family abode called, ‘Soul Garden’. Its Architecture appears overwhelmed by the densely knit neighbourhood, thrusting in a defensive mannerism all along its peripheral boundaries. The building counteracts with a calm composure in an attempt to ignore the city’s hustle and bustle, taking complete command of a rectangular plot and consuming it in an unusually introverted fashion. The contemporary build shies away from its immediate neighbours but braces with a hint of confidence towards the vehicular access road from its eastern front.
FACADE
The architecture has a modest yet bold composition to its introvertish design intervention. In form, it flaunts an inorganic appeal of sharp angles and neat lines, displaying a minimalistic expression. It gradually grows from ground level upwards in a terracing and staggered fashion, scaling to 3 storeys in height at the apex. The terracing strategically creates the option of accommodating spill out terrace spaces at different levels. Glass balustrades at these terraces dissolve and become one with the composition to conserve the limelight onto the structure itself.
The building exhibits a simple white wash all over its external anatomy, attempting to display a bit of valour by embracing hints of bright color into its facade portal frames. The framed sun-yellow tone, manifests mild steel perforated louvres that functionally drape its elevation in a genteel veil-like fashion. They may deceivingly seem opaque and static externally in the daytime. By night, as the house gets illuminated by artificial lighting from within, the louvres reveal a hidden sheer visual connection to the outside world that is secretly unknown otherwise during the day. The architecture conceives an unfamiliar expression as it comes alive by night, with a whisper of human habitation as it glows in honest confession of its accurate self.
PROGRAM
A deceivingly modest facade translates into an introverted spatial arrangement, hiding away an oasis that is indeed sacrosanct to its inhabitants and is kept private.
Entering from the ground level through a framed louvered portal at the facade, a person is given a warm welcome by its near human anthropometric scale. This portal also frames an array of spatial experiences that renders the ‘Soul garden’ signature, showcasing a hierarchy of spaces that respond in close choreography with the natural light streaming into the building.
Programmatically the abode showcases a higher footfall engagement from the first floor upwards, where all functions and spaces converge with respect to a central skylit court. The court accommodates an idyllic tropical garden juxtaposed with a cascading waterfall, blessing all the surrounding circumambient spaces of the house with a visual or an acoustic calm.
The court also essentially divides and unites the western and eastern wings of all floor layouts, connecting them to each other via ramps overlooking the court.
The first floor maintains a semi-open spatial configuration of communal spaces accomodating a lounge area at the west wing, a dining room and kitchen at the east. These spaces have the ability to either be one with the court or separate themselves via sliding glass doors, to contain air conditioning during hotter spells of the year.
The second floor houses the master bed & ensuite bath, with a spill out balcony that overlooks the garden-court from the west wing. A children’s bed, bath and study, pitches itself towards the east, with a terrace spill out space at the east facing facade. The bedroom especially highlights a unique cosy-corner built into a wardrobe that cantilevers over the garden-court like a protruding glass box. This translates into a versatile space to lounge whilst devouring an idyllic visual of the garden.
The third floor accommodates an indoor lounge that spills over onto open terraces in both wings, with a certain stagger over the central court. The lounge is connected to an ensuite bath, offering an option to transform the space into a guest room at any point in time.
A noteworthy design strategy implemented into the design intervention is seen along the entire plot length of the southern boundary. It accommodates all the building’s services scaling vertically to all floor levels, with the purpose of shielding the rest of the house from excessive heating.
INTERIORS
The interiors of ‘Soul garden’ have indeed quite a fresh and bespoke appeal to each of its spatial configurations. It sports a minimalist base palette of two neutral colours comprising white and grey, and an accent tone of yellow interpreted differently in each space. This scheme resonates on all floor levels with differential manifestations in terms of composition and character.
Each space exhibits white washed or yellow painted accent walls, toned down with tasteful grey exposed concrete ceilings. The flooring manifests either patterned tiles, cement floors finished with a mixture of white and yellow cement oxide, yellow tandoor or terracotta tiles.
Wardrobes sport a bright white laminate or traditional handmade cane work embracing a dying art.
The uniqueness of expression in each space creates a different and identifiable atmosphere, rendering a ‘sense of place’, as one meanders through its networks.
Since the garden court is the unifying element that marries all the interior spaces together, it is further accentuated with a vast drapery of mild steel sheeting that is laser cut with perforations all over its surface area. Sporting a bright sun-yellow tone, the sheeting gently folds at the apex of the building into the terrace slab, scaling two floors in height. Functionally the horizontal apex of the sheet fold is protected with glass, whilst its vertical surface is protected by stainless steel mesh to screen away insects.
The perforations invite stark rays of sunshine into the soul of ‘Soul Garden’, painting its multitude of surfaces with artful speckles that are ever changing through the course of each day. The sun rays dynamically create and erase patterns with different interpretations as it instinctively discovers an array of textures along its day long journey. Enriching and nurturing each of these sun kissed surfaces to thrive beautifully in harmony as one peaceful entity.
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Project drawings, specifications & Photography provided by the respective Architecture Firm
Analysis & Article written by-
Architect Rohini Gomez Braganza