Ahmedabad, Gujarat | 2014 – 2015

Amazo Bistro is an all day café and restaurant on the edge of Ahmedabad. The restaurant space occupies the corner ground floor of a building, with an adjacent area for outdoor seating. The building sits on the north side of a busy road that connects SG Highway to SP Ring Road, two major thoroughfares in the city. While the adjacent seating area could be a fantastic addition to the restaurant, and a great opportunity to bring the ambience outside, its drawbacks were that it perches on the edge of a busy road, and it is soaked in sun all afternoon. For us the challenge was to create an enclosure structure that extended the character of the interior space outside, but which also protected the exterior from noise and sun, all while feeling open and engaging.

For this we came up with a custom made vertical garden, formed from interlocked bent pipe mild steel frames, and anchored with a floating foundation of exposed concrete planters. The system had to be simple to construct and simpler to maintain, with robust plants to withstand the southwest sun. Each vertical frame stands on its own feet, weighted by its concrete planter. Neighbouring frames are interlocked with smaller, alternating mild steel pipes. These were welded together on site and tilted up into place. Then the concrete planters were placed inside and filled. The same interlocking pipes support a mild steel rod basket for ceramic pots which each hold a combination of upward growing and hanging plants that climb out of their perch to eventually camouflage the frame that supports them. The pots step back as they rise, pushing the overall centre of gravity toward the centre of the planter, and helping to stabilize the structure, even in high winds. A drip irrigation system runs along each pot, irrigating the plants while at the same time turning the whole screen into a wet, porous mesh whose evaporation cools the hot prevailing south-westerly winds that pass through it.

The planted frame both shades and buffers the outdoor space from sun and road, but this containment also draws the space into conversation with the restaurant inside. The language of the garden is reiterated in the stripped down, open interior, split with lightly framed shelving units that form intimate dining areas connected through a blur of lightweight wood, jars and glasses.

Ranchhodpura, Gujarat    2010 - 2015

In many ways, this project is more about its making than anything else. For us, an opportunity to reflect on the contingencies of the design process—where they happen and how, at what scales they interact, and which points we must fix to let others remain loose.

The house in the landscape was recreated from the pieces of a 300 year oldhaveli. In this structure we merge new and old systems of assembly, combining 18 inch brick walls in concrete frame with gutai lime plaster and restored telpaanifinished teakwood elements. The basic form follows the original courtyard layout, flanked by bedroom, kitchen and mezzanine, while the wrapping terrace and sunken entry extend into the spaces outside, to transform the original row house layout into a part of the landscape.

The process began with a video, taken by an owner ready to demolish a termite damaged but beautiful row house in northern Gujarat. Normally when this type of house is destroyed its parts of value are sold to various antique dealers. Instead, our client acquired the entire house, packed up all its parts, and stored them on his property near Ahmedabad. We began the conceptual design process with the video and a short list of elements with their basic dimensions. Only after agreeing on the direction of the design did we take one day (because we couldn’t risk the damage or theft associated with leaving elements out all night) to unpack as much as we could and measure critical dimensions. Already there we found many pieces not present in the list, and barely covered in the imagery. From those basic measurements we drew up the elements and developed the design. The first time we could completely open the elements and start to puzzle them out came after the columns, roof and plinth were finished. It was then that we began the conversations with our carpenters about what, where and how, given the basic framework of the courtyard we had seen and planned. As elements were unearthed, projected locations shifted to accommodate new pieces, or to hold related parts. We gradually moved away from drawings, making more decisions on site, because the argument couldn’t be divorced from the place and the artisan’s perspective.

Palanpur, Gujarat    2011 - 2015

This 4 story commercial building in northern Gujarat maximizes the visibility of street facing shops by creating three strips that face 2 semi open courtyards between them. The ground floor is elevated to open and ventilate off street parking whose connection to the space above is reinforced by a series of ramps and stairs that run from basement to ground to plinth, with seating embedded to encourage public use. The shade above is modulated to protect the shop fronts from sun, dipping down in the southwest to add a few hours and lifting in the northeast to let the breeze fly out.

Deesa, Gujarat    2012 - 2014

A multi-generational family of eight asked for a straightforward house that would naturally withstand the harsh climate conditions of northern Gujarat and weather well over time. In line with their clarity of mind, they submitted a list of their specific requirements, outlining the way that they needed to use their home, and their expectation of a durable, simply designed structure.

In response to the aspiring family, the project balances innovate design ideas and methods with the traditions important to their lives and locally available construction skill, material and knowledge. Integrated into the landscape, the house inhabits a corner site near a series of twin bungalows. A low profile with articulated volumes allows the house to merge with the scale of the surrounding homes, feeling at once both expansive for the family and in conversation with the neighbourhood.

To support their condition of living between inside and out, the home consists of a group of shaded volumes clustered around an L-shaped verandah. Sheltered under the large roof, rooms are surrounded by open passages that draw wind through the house like a sieve. Thick brick walls temper the inside spaces against high diurnal temperature variation. The roof doubles as a summertime sleeping terrace, protected with high walls pocked by openings for targeted ventilation, and during monsoon it gathers rain for storage in a 40,000L underground water tank.

The plan is oriented toward the prevailing south-westerly winds, and while the deep verandah and covered passages protect the volumes from summer sun, the roof allows the low winter sun in to warm their outside walls. The thin sloping concrete slab of the verandah roof structure is supported by a concrete-anchored steel frame embedded into a composite frame and load-bearing structure for the house.

The verandah is the heart of the house. All rooms and all levels empty into it, and it mediates the experience between inside and out. Because much of the family activities occur in this intermediate space, what might have become a passage instead is a place. As a climate responsive element, it absorbs and exhausts the heat of the summer, welcomes warmth in winter, and encourages the movement of air in muggy monsoon. The high summer sun cannot reach direct room walls, and the sloping roof with ventilated openings at the top allows the hot air to rise and naturally exhaust, moving it faster because negative pressure behind the thrust of the wind moving up the verandah roof draws air out faster. In winter, these openings, which are fitted with operable louvers, can be closed to hold in the hot air. The fireplace in the verandah also adds to radiating heat in the space. In monsoon, and on summer evenings, gaps between the room clusters open to draw air through the space, cooling both the verandah and the outer surfaces of inside rooms.

Lapkaman, Gujarat    2011 - 2014 

Located at the corner of 3 adjoining plots, this house rises from the ground, each plinth turning as it moves up, creating a volume that spirals from lotus pond to pool deck to living space to planted roof. The family and their guests enter from below, crossing the pond and climbing past the pool to a verandah adjacent to the main living space.

Ahmedabad, Gujarat | 2014

Tower House is an experiment in vertical living. A typical bungalow of 400 square meters is squeezed into a footprint of 6.5 x 12.5m, forcing the program up five stories rather than spread along the ground. Despite the stacked floors, the design generates the experience of a house, with a diversity of spatial types throughout its section. At the same time, it takes advantage of the benefits of moving vertically with efficiently organized services, views across the city, and greater potentials for both stack and cross ventilation.

A concrete frame provides the skeleton, while central vertical circulation allows openings on all sides, and an outward looking entry to every room. Walls wrap the interior spaces, while balconies move around on each floor to open new vistas. Rooms are treated as pockets within the larger framework, minimizing the need for air conditioning and maintaining the connection to the outdoors. While balconies bring a corner of outdoor space into the room, punched windows around the wall create an intimate experience, whose deeply protected view is found only from a seated position.

The design balances two driving forces: conveying a house not a tower, and using verticality for an efficient, climate responsive building. The central stair, critical for both, is the core of the design. It organises services and treats vertical movement as part of the house. Each room opens from it and moves back toward it. On first and fourth floors, glass panels reveal the stair and further envelop it inside the rooms. As a passive cooling element, the semi-open stair draws air through the house, while ventilation in each room can be controlled by opening windows. A ceramic rain screen filters light and shields the stair from water, protecting the privacy of the space.

Ahmedabad, Gujarat    2011 - 2014

This structure adds a new lounge and service structure to an existing estate by transforming the space behind the main house into an active street that engages both structures, formed by a series of waterbodies moving along a glass facade and to end in a bridge lightly connecting existing to new. All activities from both structures now open out into the street between them, carrying the residents outside into the trees. 

Placed in an already densely grown grove, the new lounge sits as a pavilion among trees.. The lifted plane of the roof recreates ground at the level of the leaves, and from it is suspended a balcony that overlooks the pool.

The composite structure uses steel to create the frame of the lounge and merges it with the concrete and brick of the service area by embedding the members in walls while allowing the steel to emerge when the space opens into the water and trees. 

Ahmedabad, Gujarat    2014 

Set in an old market for textile offices, this project intervened in restoring a damaged concrete facade by translating the balcony requirement into a lighter, steel and aluminium cantilevered structure that still falls in line with its ageing neighbors. Inside the office, simple wood joinery and detailing resurfaces the space, and cleanly organizes the interior systems.

Ahmedabad, Gujarat   2012 - 2013

We renovated an ailing apartment to create a studio for a fashion designer, and adjoining gallery for traveling exhibitions. The split level of the apartment works to separate private working spaces from public gallery, which opens into a cozy garden that occupies the corner of the plot, nestled against the street. A limited color palette of materials accentuates the bright bougainvillea that surround the space. 

palanpur, gujarat;  2010 (2013, 2018...)

This 60 house twin bungalow project was developed for a site at the edge of the city. Three large open spaces work as lungs for the dense plots while one way roads loop around to avoid the tight turn at a dead end! A first, paved garba surface for dances and processions, a second, soft with grass and pipal trees cools the site at the heart, and a third, laid with sand, gives a small play area for exploratory children. 

House plans are simple and open with a verandah at front that mediates the living space with the street, and at entry a bit of sky drops in to light the tulsi, whose position ties together the living and eating spaces inside. The stair travels to top, built out to provide a safe and organizing structure for inevitable and invited family expansion.