Self renovations- advantages & risks involved

 

                  Image courtesy - Wagle ki duniya - Sony Sab channel

In a recent episode of Hindi sitcom – ‘Wagle ki Duniya’on Sony Sab television channel, one of the protagonist takes things in his own hands during an undergoing self renovation of his own house in a multi storied apartment. Even though the contractor refuses to break a part of the external wall of the house, he himself hits the hammer leading to part of the wall collapsing below on his neighbour – Mr Wagle’s car. Leading to a stiff quarrel between the neighbours, any attempt done to explain the risks to their building by a structural engineer invited in the society office goes in vain.  Here I would like to thank the producers of the serial to raise an important issue of ‘Self Renovation’ and the impending risks thereafter.

In the historic times, it was quite common of our ancestors to build and repair their own homes. It is perfectly natural for us to think that we have all the knowledge to start renovating our own house using available material & labour. One of the biggest advantages in renovating our home by ourselves is that we can take quick onsite decisions into changing spaces or selecting various finishing materials as well as fittings. Also you end up taking full responsibility of the decisions taken during renovation where you explore your creative skills of defining your living spaces that are close to your functional & cultural requirements.

The main difference is that as against historical times where people used to live in low rise buildings. in today’s context, most of us live in large apartment complexes with multi-storeyed buildings having a common RCC (reinforced concrete) frame structure and complex interconnected network of building services of drainage, water supply, HVAC, fire protection, storm water drainage, solar water heating etc. While it was easy & less risky to do renovate low rise buildings , renovations in houses located in the complex buildings of today demand involvement of professional architects & civil engineers in the job.

Let’s divide the types of renovation in two categories:

A) Superficial renovations involve mainly Interior work like painting, furniture work, wall paneling, false ceiling, change of electrical or plumbing fixture & fittings, adding safety doors, changing door panels, changing sliding windows etc.

B) Extensive renovations – These involve civil changes in wall locations, breaking walls , building new walls, change in use of rooms , dealing with leakages, changing plumbing systems, changing wall or floor tiles in toilets or rooms, air conditioning rooms  etc.

While the ‘A’ category of renovations can easily be dealt own your own with fair creative skills of selection of right colour, materials & fittings , the category ‘B’ of extensive renovations are technical in nature. This requires professional guidance from architects & engineers.

Here are few guidelines for you while going in for Extensive Self renovations:

1)      Have a holistic plan on paper before starting out with respect to what & how changes will affect your home

2)      Understand the complexity – Older the house, more will be the complexities & risk involved. For e.g. – Simple decision of painting may require checking for dampness using moisture meters

3)      If you visualize extensive renovations in your home, involve a professional Architect & civil engineers for a pre inspection & possibilities of what all can happen. For old homes, it is fairly common for plaster to come off or additional damage to walls if they have to be broken

4)      DONT BREAK or TAMPER with the COLUMNS, BEAMS, SLABS & EXTERNAL WALLS. This will cause damage to entire building.

5)      For RCC frame structures, don’t just assume that internal partition walls could be removed. Especially for old buildings, even partition walls between rooms may carry structural load. CALL a professional STRUCTURAL ENGINEER for INSPECTION before breaking partition walls.

6)      Ensure that safety nets are installed while breaking any part of wall where debris is likely to fall on lower terrace of street. In case debris are likely fall within your house, dump heaps of sand on the floor, so that flooring tiles don’t get damaged.

7)      For extensive CIVIL RENOVATIONS, always TAKE BUILDING PERMISSIONS from LOCAL MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES by involving Architects

8)      During electrical work of any kind especially if you are adding multiple light points & additional power points for air conditioning system, dishwashers, home workshop etc, consult electrical engineers for overall loading. The entire electrical system of your house is generating from distribution board or DB where main supply from building is given.

9)      When you are relocating kitchen, toilets or adding additional toilets in old houses, please have a clear understanding of location of drainage & water supply system of your building since connections to drain pipe & water supply pipe will have to be considered before you take such decisions. Plumbing connections done in a faulty manner will lead to leakages

10)   If you are planning to have temporary covering of terrace using steel framework, the overall RCC framework of the building needs to be studied as additional load will come on it.

11)   Leakages in your home may have many reasons. It is important to know if they are happening from external walls or through pipes or toilets and close those appropriately before you undertake painting or furnishing work of the house.

12)   Removing door frames or window frames is complex affair during renovations. Frames are embedded in walls during or immediately after construction. Hence it is not as simple as changing the door or window panels. There are likely chances that during removal of frames, part of surrounding walls may break down.

13)   Any part of new wall built next to an old wall will also require re plastering. There are techniques used in construction on how to do the plastering of new walls. If both construction of new walls & plastering is not done carefully, cracks may develop in due course of time.

14)   In case you are adding additional storage water tanks in toilets, please check if lofts on which they are supposed to be installed can carry additional loads. Many times both of water tanks & inverters, lofts can be added in steel fabrication but we need to ensure that the walls on which the fabrication brackets are to be installed can carry additional loads & enough support is given.

15)   In many old houses, where you are planning to have old cement terrazzo tile flooring or kotah tile flooring removed & replaced with vitrified / ceramic tiles, please note that the entire process of removal  of old material, disposing debris and levelling of surface is complex job. There are techniques where new tiles can be installed on old flooring using adhesives.

16)   Finally one should understand that every demolition job done during renovation creates construction waste & debris which is our duty to dispose them off in a responsible manner. We should check that contractors & labor involved are not throwing them in society compound or lakes & streams thus harming the environment.

Most renovations falling under category of type A – Superficial or Interior works are relatively less risky, though taking professional advice from designers may help enhance the beauty of the spaces in your house.

Ar. Hrishikesh Ashtekar

What constitues Home Customization?

If you are purchasing an underconstruction apartment or your are renovating your own home, Home Customization is the key concept for you.

Home Customization means converting the standard home you got from developer to a home that is more suitable to you and your family.

Following things are steps of home Customization:

A) Civil changes
1) Change location and heights of internal walls
2) Changes location of room doors
3) Change toilet layouts
4) Changes to accommodate utility areas in dry balconies

B) Electrical and data cabling
1) Changes in electrical layout based on your own interior layout
2) Identify and provide additional electrical points as per your requirements
3) Provision for Home automation and data cabling for WiFi
4) Location of Inverter or connecting your home to DG sets

C) Plumbing
1) Changes in Plumbing layout to suit modified toilet layout
2) Making Provision for hot water through geyser either electrical or solar or gas
3) Location of Gas Bank
4) Provision for Washing machine and dish washer
5) Provision of additional sinks in utility

D) Finishes
1) Have alternative finishes for walls and doors
2) Have optional choices for kitchen dado tiles
3) Have optional choices for toilet tiles
4) Have different sanitary fittings than those provided by developers

E) Interiors
1) Detail design of furniture and falseceiling
2)  Selection of various finishes
3) Selection of light fittings and fixtures
4) Design for Special requirements like Projector systems, home automation fittings , home theater and audio visual rooms 

‘Patterns of Life’ (POL) analysis – use in design of homes

 Pattern of life (POL) or behavior pattern describes a recurrent (e.g., normalcy) way of acting by an individual or group toward a given object or in a given situation[1]. 

Considering that people may have recurring habits and behavioral patterns in their homes based on multiple factors like age , sex, cultural background, religion, rituals, genetic influences, associations , interests , , work systems, hobbies etc, it is possible to identify certain typical behavior patterns that can be the basis used to create their living environments. An attempt to decipher life patterns has been made in the book ‘Pattern Language’ by Prof. Christopher Alexander[2]  in 1977, where around 253 livability patterns were identified  within scale from Region to individual homes based on contemporary readings of people and spaces mainly in the western world. Another inspiration to develop the idea, is the concept of ‘Emergent’ or ‘Self organized’ systems that let human beings to organize themselves spontaneously in terms of social networks or physical orders[3].

The idea put forth is that, if data by families regarding multiple patterns of their life and how they use different spaces within their homes is analyzed, it may be possible to derive space syntax[4] based on the social logic of people within the family. This gives unique codes and ideas in terms of associations between spaces, furniture, building elements and people that may formed as the basis of customizing various living spaces in their homes.

The three broad types of variables at the intersection of which POL could be understood are

1)    People – various members of the family

2)    Spaces & Objects – different spaces in the household  along with the related objects like furniture as well as temporary objects of use in various activities

3)    Activities – changing associations between people and objects in various spaces

  The POL studies need to be understood for various spaces in the house not only for routine daily life but also special occasions and situations like festivals or lockdowns where they undergo temporary changes.

 

POL as the basis of creating responsive living environments:

The various fields where designers are involved into creation of living environments have an approach where the spaces are considered to be static environments frozen in time. Thus the visual feel of the rooms, objects, furniture, light, color and finishes attain prime importance. The linear approach where the designer responds to series of requirements of the clients through various drawings and 3^rd dimension views ends up shaping a sculptural edifice where the users living in the newly defined space adjust with time. The critical point at which requirements are finalized is overlooked and the design is worked upon within the available standardized alternatives of room sizes, shapes, fixed furniture pieces, modular systems, movable seating, working and eating furniture, light fixtures etc.

 

POL analysis gives unique patterns of life of different families that serve as starting point to see design of living environment as flexible and modifiable spaces. Homes are not static entities but dynamic spaces where there are multiple patterns of activities happening throughout the day. These activities and their patterns also change contextually with respect to special occasions like festivals.  Families may have their own unique patterns of storing, cooking, serving and eating food. The kitchen platform and dining table may double up for many things.   The recent pandemic and lockdowns where most people spent larger time at homes used their living rooms, terraces, dining areas in more multiple ways beyond the intentions meant. The WFH & SFH (Work / Study from Home) activity were carried out in multiple ways and multiple spaces in our houses. Apart from these daily activities, the Asian culture has multiple family events and festivals where friends and family gather together to celebrate. The extent of use of spaces in multiple ways is usually inversely proportional to the average size of homes. Thus we find families living within frugal means in smaller houses being compelled to use living space in multiple manners. Above all enforces a belief that homes and living environment are more like living organisms which should have spaces and living environment that respond to the ever-changing momentary reality of the users. This logic is similar to the way we change user interface and apps in our mobile phones for different purposes.

POL analysis leads to study and reorganization of multiple types of data based on the unique life of the inhabitants and their family. The end result in such a kind of an activity in terms of design and execution may not be in form of typical spaces but may be in form of rooms and living spaces which allow flexibility , incrementality and modifications in fixed as well as movable objects , through which it may be possible to the end user to respond to their unique patterns of life that are dynamic..

 Hrishikesh Ashtekar

Architect Urban designer 

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[1] https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/8745/1/Pattern-of-life-from-WAMI-objects-tracking-based-on-visual/10.1117/12.2015612.short

[2] A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction is a 1977 book on architecture, urban design, and community livability. It was authored by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein of the Center for Environmental Structure of Berkeley,

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order, http://csis.pace.edu/~marchese/CS396x/Computing/Ashby.pdf

[4] Social logic of space – Bill Hillier & Julienne Hanson

Responsive living environments

 

Every building has components that are fixed and static and components that are movable in response to the changing weather conditions as well as needs and requirements of the people occupying it. Responsive environments refer to living and working environments that offer the opportunity to people occupying the space to change the space and the functions whenever required as per their needs. Within any living space there is a hierarchy of control of static as well as movable components. For example in a house, the static elements will be the walls, tiles, roof, staircase, sinks, and kitchen platform and plumbing fixtures in toilets. As against this the movable elements will be the doors, windows, curtains, light fixtures, ceiling fans, air conditioning, music system, taps and furniture where the user has got an opportunity to control as per one’s needs in the requirement to temporarily alter the function of the space, change the feel of the space   or control the comfort conditions of the house. The role of the designer traditionally has been to imagine a house as a static entity where the user interprets the space on his own based on his or her requirements by making need based changes in the space by modulating movable components. Here the ability to modulate is limited to the possible changes that can be done within the existing framework of static living environment. In the current context, responsiveness is equated to sensor based or software based user experience design where the internal environmental conditions or services such as water, electricity etc can be controlled through either manual or remote application of technology.   

Can design move beyond this technology oriented approach? Can the designer play a more prolonged role beyond handling over the project to the client?

Can living environments be designed to become more emergent, based on systemic research based interpretation of data of the various users while using the spaces?

These questions could not have very simple answers as multiple type of people interact differently with their living spaces based on their culture , ethnicity, social backgrounds, affordability etc. Thus one standard policy or design of a component fitting for all may not be the correct answer. There may be two approaches played by the designer

A)     The designer continues to engage with the space with the inhabitants post occupancy

OR

B)      There are multiple components that are flexible and are designed uniquely based on the needs of the users which offer enough opportunity for multiple and responsive use of living spaces.

Just to take an example, The current scenario of pandemic and lockdowns pushed may people within the four walls of their homes. ‘Work from Home’ or ‘Study from home’ are two such scenarios building up that will affect design of homes. The natural simplistic reaction by developers is to offer additional square feet area in projects instead of offering more ‘Responsive spaces’ within the same smaller spaces. This led to larger home sizes that become more un affordable in most of the larger cities. The recent –‘India Residential Overview – Oct to Dec 2021’ report by ‘Square yards’ puts forth the reality that there were 50 % to 70% people who searched for buying and renting homes respectively that are lower than 1000 square feet or those homes with an affordable category between 30 lakhs to 70 lakhs. Where as the demand for larger homes between 3 BHK  to 4 BHK was lower than 20% in most larger cities.

The lesson here is that complex problems of adaptability cannot be solved by just providing additional spaces. Designing ‘Responsive living environments’ that offer customized and changeable spaces to users may be the answer to these complex questions.

 

Hrishikesh Ashtekar

Architect & Urban designer