Generational Home in Lush Tropics

50,80,20 House.

The project is a 70-year-old story of a house which has lived through the years forging an atemporal bond with its inhabitants over generations being their refuge, repose and sanctuary.
The original house was built in the 50s and more rooms were added on in the 80s resulting in the current layout. Though conceived as an intervention to refurbish and enlarge some of the spaces, the actual work involved dismantling the entire structure to be rebuilt as new, opening up the scope for refinement.

Advocating to revive the house for a second time as an ode to its history, the existing footprint served as a reverent catalyst hinged upon the collective memories of the people who built and lived through, allowing them to revisit and reflect on the journey through time and space, a narrative of the family as a profound entity.

Having the entire structure removed yet adhering to the original footprint opened up the opportunity to layout the living spaces and bedrooms around a central courtyard in sincere reminiscence of the traditional architecture of the region. The courtyard is a pivot around which life unfolds slowly, manifesting in conversations between the past and present both in setting and the set. The design is expressed in a honest display of the intervention - the additions emphasised in material and deletions accentuated through structural elements presented as an ardent reinterpretation of the past, the details invoking a sense of familiarity yet remains undeniably contemporary and original. These details are repeated as a motif across the layout binding together the renewed spatial identity and distinct material choices which establish the built history of the house.

Latest masonry additions to the footprint are identified by the exposed stone walls. The entire structure is sheltered by a sloped roof made with terracotta tiles resting over a timber structure. A combination of silver grey cement floor tiles, grey lime and chalky white micro cement rendering for the walls was chosen. Joineries were made with open grain teak wood. Detail elements were crafted in wood exuding warmth to the touch, fresh to the olfactory senses. The material palette resulted in a monastic and meditative setting for the house, charged by the controlled natural lighting from the courtyard leading the emotional revival of the new house, enabled by the memories of space stretched across time.

To the outside the house registers a grounded image in scale and weight, bolstered by the thick stone walls recessing the entry, forming a threshold mediating the inside outside dialogue, deliberating on the arrival as an event. The sloped roof overhangs precariously low that one can touch the eave boards on arrival and departure exploring ideas of intimacy and harmony through touch.

As a rebuilding exercise, the project is a celebration of inheritance from an older generation, honouring the spirit of the built. The design is a reading of the old and new, trying to bring out the latent allure of an elusive ideal through a structural, spatial and material intervention on a sentient footprint, propitiating ideas of permanence, timelessness and perpetuity.

Architecture & Interior Design - Stirvi Architects
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Website : www.stirviarchitects.com
Email : [email protected]

Landscape Architects - Treeline
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Filmed by Syam Sreesylam
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Civil Contractor - Arching Infra
Steel Fabrication - Studio Vinton
Wood Joinery, Mill Work, Cabinetry - Tashta
Lighting - Spaces
Automation - Gadgeon India
Flooring - Rajesh MR
Roofing - Thilakan, Jitto Baby
Furniture - Dtale