When People will ‘DESIGN’ their own Houses, Neighborhoods & Cities !

Towards a Participatory ‘User defined approach’ for designing  housing :

People in Traditional cultures since ancient times always knew , how to make their buildings & homes as per their needs. The farmer’s hut was always built by the farmer. Even today right from the Hausas from Nigeria to the Native villagers of Kutch in India make their own abodes from a simple material like Mud. The knowledge of construction always got transferred through generations as oral procedures or sometimes as in places like Kerala or Rajasthan , where the house making evolved in form of sophisticated art form in cities, there were guilds of traditional craftsmen who worked in close team with the owners. Making one’s own house was a traditional ritual. In Native American Red Indians , the nomadic tribe women got together to build the Tipi tents. A decade ago, when I was living in Bhutan, I have seen adobe mud wall houses being built in the local villages, where people sang as they beat the mud in the wall using large logs. When people built their own house, they knew how much area they require, what are the spaces in the house, where to sleep, where to cook, how much light should come into their rooms, where will their cattle stay etc. etc. After building the house, people used to decorate the inside with great care using locally available materials & design patterns, inherent to their cultures. Hence a Banni hut in Kutch was never the same as a Hausa mud house in Nigeria even if both arose in desert plains.

What is the ‘Big’ issue about standardized housing?

Compare this with the modern day house building activity in large cities. If we consider the people residing in cities as roughly divided into 3 types of economic classes – Poor, Rich & Middle class, we find a typical process being followed by each class of people. The Poor seldom have a choice of ownership. The poor man makes his hut or a shelter on a pavement or even illegally in a slum using whatever material that is available. Most of the times, the house is made by his own family & friends. What it interesting that even though the living conditions are wretched & unhealthy, still the poor man exercises the ‘Right’ to define his own living space by himself in less means. The Rich man has the entire world at his service. The Rich man buys a large plot of land, hires the best designers & contractors to make the house’ Exactly the Way as He Wants’ or requires. Thus the rich man also exercises his ‘Right’ to define his own living space without any limitations. The Middle class which is the maximum of us living in large cities cannot be as daring as the Poor man & cannot afford to live like the Rich. Thus he cannot make a illegal hut , nor can he build his own bungalow. Thus when he wants his own house, he goes to the ‘Developer’ who makes building with several standardized design units. The so called ‘Ready possession’ apartment gives the middle class families almost no option to exercise their ‘Right’ to define their own living space except spending lavishly on exclusive furniture items & false ceilings with infinite lights ! When everything from a rigid layout  to location of toilets , plumbing & electrical layouts are predefined by the developer, the end user has to really ‘adapt’ his lifestyle to live in a given situation. Thus the ‘Real loser’ is the Middle class which goes ‘Unexpressed’ & Design ‘Suppressed’ in terms of defining their own spaces.

The standardized units housing even though economically practical is not the answer to the housing needs of middle class people.  Nevertheless the bridge between requirement versus available housing stock in cities needs to be taken care of & hence mass housing projects cannot be avoided especially in large cities.  Can there be a ‘Middle path’ where a house can still be part of a large ecologically responsive  system of structures & services, but yet can grow as per needs, can change spaces as per requirements & aesthetically define itself as per the various cultures in cities? Various experiments have been made by designers & philosophers in the world before on this kind of issues. Growing mass housing structures have been designed in form of pre fabricated units.

What has the world done till now?

Notable experiment is a movement in Europe called ‘Open Architecture’, in which an open structure in form of slabs & service cores is left for people to design their own house. Even though this movement has evolved in Netherlands under guidance of Architect Urban designer Prof Ar.John Habrakan, projects have been built in far off lands in Japan based upon it.  On a larger scale experiments have been carried out to define Living neighborhoods by Ar. Christopher Alexander based upon his new theory in Urban Design & Pattern language. A Generative code is sought for based upon the premise that Community housing can be created by people themselves, those who live & belong to the land instead of being based upon monetary profitable systems like housing built by developers. Another recent development theory is one called ‘Emergent Urbanism’ where proponents argue that instead of planning a development to its last detail, a city can grow organically as self organized built forms defined by people along certain major network routes like street ways . On the Indian front, even the Government authorities have now realized that standardized mass housing when built for rehabilitating slums or project affected settlements gets unoccupied & rejected by most of the end users occupying the houses. In Navi Mumbai , Pune & various cities in India, experiments have been made to give people only a plinth & basic drainage water supply services (BSUP schemes) which create flexible framework where people will build for themselves an incremental house within their means. People centric co –operative housing movement has always been there since many years in Indian cities especially in cities like Delhi. In case of  Privately built mass housing , The day when, developers see mass housing beyond just a profit generating enterprise, will make them realize that people actually require a flexible systems within which they can define their own spaces instead of standardized rigid living cells they are selling today.

What could be the New approach?

 "At the core... is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea... comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people".

—Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, front bookflap

The ‘Pattern Language’ written by Ar. Christopher Alexander is an Epic book in Modern Architecture which explains design as patterns, corresponding to behavioral systems of people & how do people live. The obvious references in the above sentence are from the studies of medieval towns in Europe & Asia, where the design of the house was an outcome of cultural & social patterns defined by the people themselves. Also due to then limited recourses of material & technology the houses, always responded to the climatic & geomorphic  context.  This concept of self definition of space is so historic in the context of human settlement, that almost all the traditional cities & houses have been built or at most defined by the people themselves. The advent of standardization & mass production of materials has made it difficult for people to exercise these space sensibilities. Also the nature of space & its use in the house has been flexible & dynamic. The traditional Japanese wooden houses came up on a structural grid based upon the dimensions of a ‘tatami’ mats, which were laid all over the house interiors. The exterior walls were in form of open able screens to let the nature come in a better season. The interior rooms could be changed when ever required because they were defined by movable ‘fusuma’ light weight internal partitions made out of lattice framed paper screens.

It is a common fact that, In case of today’s mass housing schemes, people tend to modify their house & their surroundings over a period of time to suit their needs. Even today, when people get changes done in their pre built houses or do ‘Interiors’, they are actually trying to Define their own space which comes as a natural instinct to them but such an endeavor can succeed in only a limited manner as most of the required adaptations & modifications get defined based upon the existing framework of structure, electrical & plumbing system used for the entire building.

The final fact remains today, when we have accepted mass housing & we cannot go back to the incremental old city houses or the farmhouses anymore. Hence there are few things people will never be able to build by themselves in today’s housing. These are-The floor slab, The roof slab & the water supply & drainage services. That’s all is that is required.

The answer is that, Within a flexible framework of structure, building services & maybe a defined external façade, it would be definitely possible for people to define their own spaces according to their own needs & lifestyle.

Even cities today can be built by the people. City is actually an abstract concept. A number of neighborhoods make a city. The neighborhoods have plots, roads & open spaces. The current towns planning systems & acts in India have been borrowed from its colonial past. In a free country even if major road structure is defined by the government & also built, All the plot re configuration in the growing suburbs & also for large scale redevelopment can be done by the land owners coming together to form a cohesive & cooperative group. All it would take is redefining certain legal frameworks to exploit such possibilities. The so called land uses allocated to land parcels will become building uses like in our old cities which has mixed use development. These communities will be ‘Livable’ & ‘Walk able’ neighborhoods defined between streets with broad sidewalks coupled with efficient mass transit systems. Interestingly the seemingly impossible processes about which I am writing have happened few hundred years ago in India. The planned city of Jaipur only defined grids of street & character of buildings on the edges of street. All the internal streets & neighborhoods are organic & built by people. Even our own Pune witnessed the laying of ‘Peth’ areas during the Peshwas period in the same process. We will find straight laid out roads in the Peth areas but the internal plot configurations was defined by the various communities who occupied the Peths. Even though seemingly congested for the Automobile to get in,  Look at the interesting spaces what we have got in the old cities.

So what New am I offering?  Nothing …Let all work together, people. Designers & executioners to better Livable cities.

Ar. Hrishikesh Ashtekar

Credits & Refrences - Various websites by Ar John Habrakan, Ar. Christopher Alexander, Emergent Urbanism, Books – Traditions in Architecture – Crouch & Johnson, Pune the Queen of Deccan & few other books

KITCHEN DESIGN-Unfolding the Mystery!

Just the word –‘KITCHEN’ arises various emotions & connotations. Since man started cooking, or to be more perfect, since women started cooking ( men do cook & should cook!) , Kitchen came into existence. Kitchen is a symbol of ‘Family life’ in any household. The woman of the house knows best how to design the same because every household will have a different culture of food which will be quite unique. No two kitchens can ever be same.

The basic village house in India, the Hut will have a ‘Chullah’ which has gradually metamorphed  into a modern day ‘Compact Modular Kitchen’ in the city houses. Kitchen design today is made to seem as an expertise or an art & is full of branded companies offering design & execution at a ‘big’ price. No doubt, it has brought a certain degree of Sleekness & Fineness in the products used for the making of the Kitchen. But the only key word that all the ‘modular’ kitchen guys talk is ‘Efficiency’. Kitchen is much more beyond this.

Kitchen actually has two dimensions – Functional & Social

The Functional dimension relates with the ‘Efficiency’ of the Layout & the various accessories. There are primarily three aspects to this dimension - Washing , Cooking & Storage.  Washing denotes location of a Kitchen Sink.  All the various other activities within Cooking & Storage involves use of various types of Mechanical & Electrically operated gadgets. Cooking & Cutting is associated with a Kitchen platform. Kitchen plat form is either of Single type, or ‘L’ type or of ‘U’ type of even as an Island style depending upon the size & space available. It is important , not to clutter the Kitchen platform with various devices but keep it as free as possible, so that it can be cleaned easily. Usually widths of Kitchen platforms are taken around 24 inches to 30 inches with the average height of around 36 inches. Height of the Kitchen platform may vary based upon the average height of the family members who will cook. A bit more height of around may help accommodate more storage in the drawers underneath.

Kitchen is one complex place in the Home where we use almost 8 to 10 types of electrical / mechanical devices, thus making it important to become efficient. Cooking is done either on the cooking range or Gas Flame range and the Microwave.  Storage is again of 3 kinds. The Refrigerator  (Fridge) which is used as cold storage for short term perishable items. The Cabinets which are used for long term food items like grains & Cabinets used for storing utensils & crockery.  Then there are instruments like Mixer , Juicer or the Food processor which relate with the act of chopping, mixing etc. Of course one may have other devices like the coffeemaker or the sandwich maker. The kitchen chimney or the exhaust maintains the ventilation system. The physical  relation of the various devices to each other & their ergonomics becomes really important. 

This Work triangle in kitchen which defines the minimum triangular distance between Fridge, Sink & Cooking equipment , as shown is very important. Ideally The term ‘Modular’ Kitchen analyses the various aspects of the functional activities & splits them into predefined  modules to house the various gadgets. Because a dedicated space is allocated to each & every physical activity, the kitchen can be planned in a very Compact space.

The Social Dimension relates with the Human side of the Kitchen space. In Indian household it is common to have a Pooja area in the Kitchen & the space gets transformed into a praying area in the morning & evening. The very act of Cooking & Serving is metaphysical in nature which relates with oneself through the ritual. If the Kitchen has space for having food (dining table or the breakfast counter) the very act of having food usually gets overlapped by Family interactions over lunch or the dinner. The location of dining area becomes extremely important as it the place which becomes the interaction space in the house. Many times when the size of Kitchen is moderate, the dining area is cut off & created in the living room. Many times we observe that the Kitchen table gets converted in to a reading, writing or work area for women or children. Any guest who goes beyond the Living room & enters the Kitchen space is usually considered to be close to the family. Historically, Kitchen was associated with a small courtyard or a backyard, especially in old ‘Wada’ or ‘Haveli’ which formed the space for interaction only for the close family members. In today’s world of modern Open kitchens, the above values may differ from household to household but still this aspect of Social space within the Kitchen will certainly exist.   

As explained in the above diagram, the ideal design of Kitchen comes out of the overlap between the various Functional & Social parameters. These days Kitchen has become an open but a very compact space in the household. An efficient kitchen even works well within 8 ft to 9 ft width. But in the effort to make it more & more efficient, the social dimension of Kitchen is getting sacrificed. We need to understand what Kitchen means to our family .We should be aware & should analyze both the Functional & Social dimensions of the Kitchen before taking a blind decision of selecting the sleek looking laminated kitchen in the modular kitchen shop.

Hrishikesh Ashtekar

PERSONALIZING SPACES – Resolving the ‘Identity Crisis’ in today’s Housing projects

Everybody likes to express themselves

A few months back, there was a cultural  program in the housing society where I live. This housing society is ‘today’s typical’ with multiple similar looking buildings. During the mid course of the program , I walked out to go back to my apartment due to some important work I needed to attend. As I reached the lift lobby, a small kid of around 6-7 years old came running alone & asked me to drop him to 7^th floor ,where he lives. The lift went up & as the lift door opened on the 7^th floor, he suddenly started crying aloud. I was confused & asked him why is he crying. The answer came that he does not live on 7^th floor. Hearing the noise, an old lady residing on the 7^th floor came out. She happened to recognize this child & told me that he does live on the 7^th floor but in the ‘H’ wing & not in the ’G’ wing where this lift door had just opened. The simple reason to this incidence was that there were no ‘cognitive’ visual references by which a child can tell the difference between lift lobbies of two different wings & doors of the houses. 

Recall how many of us as adults have faced similar problems in today’s housing projects while looking for an address in similar looking huge building complexes, where we search address through abstract numbers like G 604 or B 302. Now recall how simply we can still locate an address in the ‘Old city’ or the Traditional neighborhoods. Some one can tell you that you have to travel down from the large lane to the small lane near the grocery store from where you have to stop next to the temple & come in the court where his house  is located which can be recognized as the house with the decorative door or with green color windows etc.

In the traditional development –villages, old cities etc , People ‘personalized’ their houses, there house fronts, entrance doors, windows with elements derived out of their culture & religions. Just take a heritage walk in any of the old town of Pune, or Kolhapur or Ahmadabad. You will get to know how a Brahmin house always appeared differently than the ‘Traders’ house. The design of their houses were of course different because the houses were built by themselves as per their own needs & not ‘Mass produced’ by developers as they are done today.

This cultural connection defines  the ‘likes’ of  people even today. Hence even in the mundane looking apartment building, as soon as you enter the house, you can distinguish between the house of ‘Shahs’ to the house of ‘Iyers’ to the house of ‘Deshpandes’. The difference comes because of the lifestyle & culture of the people & what their background is. Religion, rituals & attitude towards life makes them ‘Make choices’ unknowingly. There have been studies carried out by Architects, Anthropologists & Social scientists in various parts of the world on this aspect. The research tell you in nutshell that it is more logical to define you own spaces by yourself rather that being impressed by what you see in magazines & movies which do no belong to you.  Hence I make it a point, Not to kill anybody’s belief when people speak with me about designing their spaces. If ‘Vastu’ is an important derivative to you, believe it in true sense. Read about  it in the traditional text books in great depth & then define the locations of various things. There are also counter arguments like when the busy lifestyle of say IT professionals is same in larger cities, we can give them modern spaces with international touch. Just remember that you are an IT professional or a Businessman in your Office. In you home you are a human being, a loving father, a son or a caring mother who comes from a certain background where certain aspects of culture still continue in some form or another.  

The Great truth is that ‘We do not do interiors’ but we ‘Express’ our attitudes, individuality, lifestyle & culture in our spaces. It is our basic need to ‘Personalize the Space’ where you live in. YOU HAVE THE ULTIMATE CHOICE to personalize your space.

So when , next time any Interior designer  or any Vastu expert tries to impose some designs on you, Think why you should not tell him to just shut up & listen to you & design as per your needs not his.

Hrishikesh Ashtekar

SIZE OF HOUSES & VARIOUS FACILITIES

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

ROLE OF SAMPLE FLAT.....!

These days almost all Developers who build Apartments, make ready a Sample flat or a Show flat as they call it. Mostly sample flats are done on first or second floor ,where one of the apartment is finished & furnished earlier or many times they make it like a temporary Film set next to the marketing office. Sample flat is the exact replica & of same size as the various types of apartment in the scheme.

When you buy a new apartment, especially before the building is ready, this sample flat tells you the end story earlier. Sample flat explains various aspects..like
a) What will be the finishes of the Walls, Floors & Ceiling ?
b) What will be kind of doors & windows ?
c) What will be make & finishes of sanitary ware like WC pans, Basins, Sinks, Faucets used ?
d) What are Electrical fittings used & where are the various electrical points located.
e) What are the various plumbing fixtures used?
f) What will be tiles used & various options available for selection?
f) How will the furniture layout fit in reality in the apartment?

It is critical for the buyer to look at the sample flat & confirm that all the above aspects mentioned will be same as that of sample flat. It is also important to confirm that aspects like various electrical points & plumbing fixtures  shown in the sample flat are available within the cost of the flat & which are the ones that you are charged extra by the developer.

Just a kind reminder , that a sample flat cannot replace your own requirements & customizing your own house especially Electrical  & Plumbing layout as per your requirements. You need to Get prepared an interior layout of your own  furniture requirements & modify the electrical & plumbing layout according to your needs. Submit your layout to the site office of the developer to ask for changes. Many times it will so happen especially in areas like kitchen & bed rooms that even though the number of electrical points remain same, you require to change the location.

These days where concealed Electrification & Plumbing is used , it is important to decide  in advance all the aspects like :
a) What are the various kinds of Electrically powered Gadgets & Equipment you use or you will buy in future like.. Mixer, TV, Music system Washing machine, Water Heater, Air conditioning & Heating equipment, Dish washer, Microwave etc etc ?
b) Do you require extra lighting in the house?
c) If you will work from home, will you require points for charging your Laptop, for Speakers & printers etc
d) In plumbing fittings do you require to install a soap dish, Grab bars next to WC pans for old people to get up, Hand shower, low level urinals etc?
e) Will you need to change the kind of WC pan.. European to Indian in one of the toilets?
g) Do you require extra facilities for differently able children & old people. Make toilets wheel chair friendly?
h) Do you feel to change the specifications of tiles used in Toilet (Many times we have bought different tiles for our clients & given to developer for installation)
j) Most important to envisage a furniture layout as per your needs in the rooms even if you may not furnish the house in near future.

This list continues.....as per your needs.

End of the story is that It is very important to see the Sample flat but it is Best to go beyond & get you house Customized as per your own need.


...Hrishikesh

NATURAL LIGHT & COLORS IN YOUR HOME

Natural light is an aspect which determines the quality of light in daytime in your home. Generally as per sun movement, if your home has windows facing North, you will have an ambient natural light but sun rays may not enter your home. If your home has windows facing south or west, you will get sun rays inside your home. If your home has windows towards east , you will get sun rays only in morning. So before deciding which side to buy the home, it will be wiser to understand the orientation factor. Many a times in apartment blocks, some rooms open towards the duct, mostly kitchens. A duct in a tall building will not bring natural light in the room as duct will be always in shadows. In a situation like if few internal walls are avoided, you can get Natural light coming from the other face which has windows. Recently we customized an apartment for our friend Ar. Jaineel Trivedi. He had bought a wonderful apartment in Kondwa with a large terrace next to Living room. As he also is an Iskon devotee, he has regular ‘kirtans’ in his house. Hence he wanted to merge his terrace in the living room, so that more people can use the outside space for sitting on occasions when his living room will be full. The original pattern of a window & small door to enter the living room was changed to accommodate a large glazed door. 

Original wall pattern of Window & door to terrace

Large glazed door connecting Living room to Terrace

Though his interior work is still in progress, you can see in the comparable photographs above how the light quality increases. 

His kitchen has less light because it opens in a duct. Here we have used white tiles all over the walls so that whatever light comes in reflects.

Use of colour in Interiors depends totally on two principle facts:

1) What is the size of the room – If you use dark colors in a small size room, the room will appear smaller & vice versa. Many a times people ask carpenters to apply dark polish on all furniture items or purchase objects of dark color for their rooms. Dark polish & dark color laminates will make your rooms look smaller in size.

Small kitchen with light colors

2) The quality of natural light  in the room – Bright colors usually bring a cheerful mood. Colors like Red & Blue look great only if the walls on which they are applied have enough natural light falling on it. Otherwise they will appear blackish on dark lit walls.   Yellow or Orange , due to more wave lengths can look good even though applied on walls with less natural light.

A house where we highlighted a wall in Living room which made
the entire environment cheerful

Living space in a house, where the combination of
 Yellow & Orange changed the feel of Space

Simple strategy for our houses with mid size or small rooms will be – Have Plenty of Natural light & have very light colors for walls & furniture. Use colors only to highlight  a wall .

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