ON WHICH FLOOR TO LIVE ON ?

Every individual family who buys a new apartment is faced with this question of On what floor should they buy the home. These days is has become ‘fashionable’ to live higher especially in large cities like Pune & Mumbai. The reason, developers sell you fresh air & spectacular views of the surroundings. Developers in Pune will charge you extra money per square foot of the flat area which goes on increasing as you go higher. Now here we have to remember that you will get these views only if your building does not have a building as high as your building next to you. So if you have view as an important criterion, please enquire what is likely to happen in the immediate proximity of your building. View was an important criterion for me as well. So when I bought my home on 6^th floor, I ensured that I buy it on the side, where only small buildings were likely to get built in the vacant plot.

But ‘View’ should not be the only criteria while selecting the floor where to live on. Given below is a schematic section of a Tall building.

If you live on the ‘Ground floor’, you will enjoy the Garden, grow trees etc. Ground floor is the place to be if you love social interaction with your neighbors. So if your family is of socializing nature, living on ground floor is ideal. If your apartment does not have a ground floor, you can  still live on First floor, which is  the maximum height which connects you to people on the ground floor & you tend to socialize more.

View of Tree Foliage from third floor apartment window from
 my parents house

Birds seen in tree foliage
from third floor

If you live on ‘Second floor’ or ‘Third floor’, you are at the height of Tree foliage.  You can hear birds singing in the morning & birds will come in your windows & balconies. Your flat will get shaded by nearby large trees. To enjoy nature it is ideal to live on second or third floor. Before I shifted, we used to live on third floor. Today on sixth floor, we miss the sound of rain falling in trees & the song of the Cuckoo. My daughter misses the Sparrows & Bulbul birds coming in or house through our windows. If you live on ‘Fourth floor’  or maximum ‘Fifth floor’, you are still at the height of Tree tops.

View of surroundings from my Sixth floor flat -Terrace

If you live on ‘Sixth floor’ to ‘Tenth floor’, you will enjoy Long distance views if there is no high building next to your building. ‘Tenth floor’ upwards you will enjoy Spectacular long distance views as there are rare chances that you nay have a very tall building next to your building because tall buildings generally are built at certain distance.

All said & done, the interiors of your house should be planned sensitively to enjoy the outdoor views & nature. It makes a big difference if you have a window seat in the sill next to the wide window , so you can sit & enjoy the view. It is important that your Sofa in the living room faces the window or the terrace & does not make its back to the great views. When I was doing changes in one of the flats, we faced the bed towards the east side terrace in the master bedroom. So every time you wake up, you see the Rising sun from the large glass door of terrace. Connection of Interiors & exteriors has been a fundamental Design principle in our traditional ‘Wada’ Architecture & much more refined in traditional ‘Japanese’ Zen Buildings.

So when you are deciding on the floor, on which you will live, ‘Look around your Building’ for answers.

Hrishikesh

I WANT 'MY HOME' LIKE 'THEIR HOME'

A few days back, a dear friend called me saying I should accompany him earnestly to his under construction apartment . The reason-There were some changes they were asking the developer to do in their apartment, which the developer was denying. So I went along with my friend & found out, that his wife had seen similar changes being done in their neighboring apartment & had liked them, so she wanted to repeat the same in their home. So I suggested that we see both the flats. After analyzing both the houses, I realized that, even though the two flats had similar layout, technically they were not the same. The room sizes in his house were much smaller. There were columns & beams of varying heights within the walls as compared to his neighbor’s house. These conditions made it difficult for the developer to remove the walls their neighbors had removed & also even if they do so(with lot of expense), the space will appear very different than the space they had liked in the other house. So I had a difficult time explaining to him & his wife that, their house was great as it is & no changes will be required to be done.

This is the most common phenomena Architects encounter. People are overwhelmed by other houses they like & want their house to look ‘the Same’. It is not possible every time because  I think every house can be custom made as per your requirements & each condition (technical as well as liking factor) is different from person to person as well as house to house. People come with photos, refer to houses they see in daily serials, movies, magazines etc. A client wanted to fit a semicircular staircase he had seen in a brochure in his bungalow which I was designing on a very small plot. We have a young IT professional living in our building  who eagerly picked up an expensive sofa set from a showroom & had to sell it off the very next day , just because the sofa which he felt great in the showroom would not fit in his modestly size living room. People are shocked when they find out the very curtains which they had liked in the shop would not match with the decor what they have in their existing rooms.

The main reason why people like other people’s homes is related with their aspirations in wanting what they do not have & wish to have. People literally see themselves living is a space they like & there is nothing wrong in this. The only issue here is as compared with a simple decision of buying a car which you may have liked in the showroom, making changes in the house or adding an object in the house is related with the overall experience of the interior space which the human mind feels. Here a good Architect can advice you because he is trained in sensing the scale & proportions due to which he can help decide the size, location, color & texture of various surfaces & objects in a room. The lifestyle & culture of the person whose house you may have liked may be completely different from you, which needs to be considered while designing. Also there are a large number of technical issues regarding construction, which you may not understand.

The moral of this post is that, even though it is your right to have a space designed suiting best to your liking & life style, it is best to consult an Architect during this process. I advice my clients to send me what I call an ‘Imagery’ in form of photographs of all the various spaces they have liked so that I can get an idea of what they like. I also try to understand in depth their lifestyle & culture which helps me in customizing their home.

So instead of copying the Home of your friend or a neighbor , figure out what ‘You like’ & what is ‘Best suitable to your lifestyle’

- Hrishikesh