A very common occurrence with most
of the people in Indian large cities- You buy a smaller apartment at first
–within your budget for your modest size family. As your family grows & as
you grow wealthier, you start looking for a larger apartment. The typical
question then arises- When we want to
move to a larger size house “What is that you are exactly looking for?”
Given below are general Comparative
area ratios for various types of houses. If we consider a unit module for one
bedroom flat, the area tends to grow in multiples for larger flats as seen.
A fairly common question which
students of Architecture ask while learning to design Mass housing is “When the increase is just in the number of
bedrooms (maybe an attached toilet with it), why do the areas taken for design
multiply as double, triple, four or five times the area of the smaller unit?”
The answer to both the above
questions does not lie only in the quantitative aspect but largely lies in the qualitative
aspect of the apartments
Let us look sequentially what this ’extra’ area should mean to you:
A typical 1BHK house may have 3 rooms- Living, Kitchen &
Bedroom & a separated WC, Bath area. The modestly sized Living room in this
kind of apartment may support only one type of Seating arrangement. The Kitchen
with a restrictive width to depth ratio may have a small designated dining area
to accommodate a table for four people. The
bedroom size will be such that it can accommodate ‘Bare minimum’ furniture. 1BHK
flat may not have a designated service area like a ‘dry balcony’ & washing
machine & clothes line needs to be accommodated in the lobby or in the
small size attached terrace depending upon the weather conditions. Working out
a furniture layout & making facilities in this kind of apartments is a real challenge . Every room should be
designed to shift functions whenever required. Eg. The Living room for a larger
family should turn into a sleeping area in the Night. The Bedroom needs to also accommodate tables
& chairs for children to study during their exams. Thus every furniture
item you buy or make will need to be thought about in great detail in terms of
its use. Care should be taken that, in the attempt to maximize the use &
storage, we do not over clutter the house & make it look small that it is. 1BHK apartment is always related with ‘Affordability’
& ‘Multi functionality’. Strangely even though these type of flats are
in great demand due to their small areas & costing, developers make them
less in number as it is time consuming & structurally costlier to make more number of
smaller sized 1BHK apartments.
A typical 2BHK house may
have 4 rooms- Living, Kitchen- dining, Bedroom & a Master bedroom. It will
always have a common toilet & an additional attached toilet with the Master
bedroom. There may be larger lobby spaces like entrance lobby & bedroom
lobbies. There also may be designated service areas like a ‘Dry balcony’ for
your clothes line & washing machine. The additional area here is generally distributed
in an increased size in almost every room. The Living room should be large
enough to have multiple seating arrangements ( a virtue rarely seen). There
should be a separate Dining table space which can house a dining table for at
least six people. The kitchen comes with
a larger arrangement of kitchen platform & as the dining area gets separated
out, more amount of kitchen storage like crockery units etc get accommodated. The bedrooms are slightly larger in size to accommodate,
even a small study area along with the double bed & wardrobes. The attached
toilet with the master bedroom gives you the privacy within the family.
Because there are two bedrooms, one bedroom can be treated as the Children’s
bedroom which can accommodate their bed areas & study areas. The need for
every room to perform multiple functions reduces here as there is an area
designated for each function. So the Living room can have a ‘Sofa set ’ instead
of a ‘Bed settee’. As we get a ‘Dry
balcony’ for clothes & services, the terrace of this apartment can be used for seating &
having even a small garden. Thus the
Design tagline in a 2BHK house goes as “Exclusive area for each function”. In India, we seldom enter our house with our
shoes on. Hence an area with a cupboard to keep shoes in the entrance lobby
means ‘a lot’ to us.
A typical 3BHK house may have 5 rooms- Living, Kitchen-dining,
Master bedroom with attached toilet , Bedroom & and additional Bedroom with
a toilet. There will be a common toilet near the kitchen. This house will have
an exclusive entrance lobby, bedroom lobbies, a dry balcony area & a fairly
large terrace. The Living room, Kitchen & bedroom areas will have similar characteristic
as any other 2 Bedroom apartment. Except that the sizes may increase marginally
to accommodate more seating areas, more storage areas. Some houses even come with additional alcoves or
separate rooms to be used for Storage,
or ‘Pooja room’The 3BHK house comes in
the ‘Luxurious’ segment of Mass housing . The finishes also come with this
quality & taste. Every area can be designed to have an exclusive function. Another quite common factor seen in 3BHK plans
is that it will have bedrooms with at least two walls as external walls & more windows to
facilitate cross ventilation. This happens because a 3BHK house consumes larger
floor space within the building. The
Design tagline for a 3BHK apartment is “Design every function in style”.
Thus Design goes beyond the aspect of basic necessity & each item can be a design statement. A 3BHK house many a times becomes
as ideal house type for Joint families as very couple may get their separate
room.
A Row house & The Bungalow is a real ‘Luxury’ in larger cities
with ever increasing real estate prices. These are usually ‘The house with my own adjacent
Car park’ & ‘The house with my own private garden’. The Pent
house or the Duplex comes in the same category in terms of the area
with Large Living areas, Large open
kitchen & Dining, Multiple bedrooms, Balconies, Terraces & Bi level arrangement
of rooms with internal staircases. Here
the Design tag line is ‘Beyond the function & Design in style’. The function & facilities aspects is taken’
For Granted’ in this kind of Housing option as there is very less Space crunch
felt due to room sizes & exclusive spaces for available every use & function. Hence each room can be
designed in style suiting to your requirements & liking. Another interesting aspect in a ‘Row house’
is the availability of clear terrace areas on the roof top, which could be creatively used beyond putting up ‘Solar
panels’ & Water tanks.
In India, the house type ranges
from ‘The Hut’ To the ‘Haveli’ (Villa) depending upon the
factor of location & affordability. The basic needs of Human beings still
remain the same. Hence the basic function what every family requires i.e –
Seating spaces , Sleeping spaces, Cooking spaces, Eating spaces & Toilets need to be taken care of. If we look upon
various types & sizes of houses as ‘Canvas’ to paint our Ideas to accommodate
all the above functions, the ‘Size of
our house Does not Matter’ !
Hrishikesh
