Our brief was to have a weekend retreat easy to reach, visited regularly, without the fear of commuting time taken and too much fore thought and planning. An extension of the home and yet without the encumbrance of daily maintenance. A place suitable for singular solitude yet endowed with the capacity to accommodate the gregariousness of fifty. A retreat to rejuvenate the body, mind and the spirit, to reinforce family and to commune with friends.
For this we acquired a piece of agricultural land of two acres, which is roughly 185metres by 55metres. It slopes by about 4.5 meters from a knoll on it’s south west corner to a dip on it’s northwest corner. It is sixteen kilometres from our home as well as our studio. A twenty minute drive away by road and track and only half that distance as the crow flies.
The sight of the distant horizon, the appearance of wild boar and ‘Neel gai,’ the birds and barren land marked with the occasional neem and mango trees have been the inspiration for the planning of this elevated verandah or ‘machan’.
A ‘Machan’ to watch the sun rise and sunset. To see the moon rise and observe the stars as they traverse the firmament. To be one with the rhythm of the ever-changing seasons. To break the shackles of time. A place where there are no limits and the horizon stretches to infinity. To be infinite.
The shadows on the back wall of brick. The large ferrocement roof overhang casting shadows, or the curving corbelled brick wall abetting this shadow. Even the coursing of brick projecting in tiers on this wall with it’s shifting shadows all reinforce the simple idea underpinning this structure. There is a light northern side with an openable glass wall for the view and there is a heavy southern side of brick to protect from the heat. The east and west walls have shorter spans to reduce solar exposure.
From above it is like a slug hibernating, from below it is verandas and terraces, offering a view that caresses the horizon. From inside it is informal with uninterrupted living space. From outside it is a lattice work of steel and glass attached to a brick wall. Our verandah suggests a house that it may be attached to but there is no house only verandah.
Nothing here is at right angles and nothing is symmetrical. The toilets and the kitchen, are placed at extreme ends with all spaces in between being multi-functional with ambigous boundaries. Round funnels or mini telescopes with covers of polycarbonate puncture the roof randomly, bringing not only the sky in but amplify the chatter of raindrops and the pitter patter of pigeon feet roosting on the roof. These are actually ventilators to evacuate the hot air trapped within the house.
The form of this house extends itself into the landscape in myriad ways. Thick brick walls standing without supporting anything, grassy mounds which enclose a vegetable garden within their topology of shallow ridges and valleys, strategically located circular seats offering unexpected gatherings and views, a series of lily ponds, an open to sky kitchen and dining area and even two tall brick piers holding a spout pouring forth water from a height into a long lap pool used for swimming. This water is recycled for the garden from here with drip irrigation pipes planted underneath the earth. All these disparate elements in natural brick strewn across the site are intended to set up a dialouge with each other and the horizon to foster an outdoor living.
At the lowest point of the site a pond has been excavated to capture every drop of water that falls on the land. In fact it even takes the neighbours runoff. The unlined pond filters the rainwater back into the soil.
On a clear winter’s night when Orion charts his course through the heavens this ensemble of natural brick walls, stand alone brick columns and the curved form of the verandah seem obvious.
Like the Jantar Mantar the ensemble is designed to track the stars!
But that is perhaps only lucky happenstance.
