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The milkman's house, a landmark in the village landscape yet disconnected from the village. The house belongs to the upper class, land owners in the village. An alien object sits there glaring its eyes on the people passing by. Its concrete exterior, with big large glass windows and rigid box like feature creates a very strong imposing image in the village landscape.
The house follows the village type -
One enters the house through the Mandav which is a large front yard made up of columns, parapet walls and a Mangalore tile or cement roof.
It is followed by a smaller plinth called Oti
One enters the interior of the house upon crossing the oti into the Hall
There are small intimate and light deficit rooms called Kholis of different members of the family on both sides of the hall
The Kitchen is located at the back of the house flowing out into the open back yard.
Compared to other houses in the village the mandav, a prominent device of the house type functioned very differently as the space was used as a workspace and for parking their 4 wheeler and three 2 wheelers. The open nature of the mandav was not getting justice as it was blocked by large tress on one side and was around 17 meters away from the life happening on the street on the other side.
The house was built incrementally according to the needs of the family. Earlier the house was inhabited by one brother and his family. Later the second brother joined him along with his family and they built their extensions on one side of the house. As the needs of the family grew the house increased incrementally towards one side of the house creating a clear designation of spaces. The core of the house slowly became shelled over and over resulting in lack of light and ventilation in the hall which was the main common space for the family inside the house.
INCREMENTALITY DRAWING
LIGHY INTENSITY
Upon further discussion with the family we got to know that they wanted to build the first emergency clinic in the village as the daughter of one brother was already practicing at a clinic 4kms away near the highway. They felt their house was complete but needed a compound wall in order to secure their cattle.
DESIGN INTENT
Hence my design process started with creating an emergency clinic for the village as a part of the house and trying to bring the outside, inside. The project tries to break the social hierarchy through softer and interactive built form as the upper class's house becomes an important way of how other people in the village see their own homes. Breaking down the previously overbuilt structure and recharging the common space through terraces, balconies and pavilions which are open in nature-open to light, the environment and people. Instead of creating a hall in one plane the design tried to experiment with creating various intimacies and larger public spaces inside a volume. The clinic stays on the top and the house happens below creating a distinction between private and public. The design has a duality to it as the house becomes private during the night when all members of the family come back from work. Sometimes just allowing people to see others is enough to build a good social relationship.
EXPERIMENTING WITH THE GRID
PUBLIC VS PRIVATE
FINAL DESIGN
FLOOR PLAN
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SECTIONS
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