Project Name: Kavidhan
Authors: Studio Black
CITATION
Designed for an extremely narrow urban plot landlocked and with common walls, the house commits to creation of a comfortable, joyful space for the family to inhabit. In the older overlays of towns and urban centers, one often confronts these tectonic situations. In this case, the eleven-feet open edge prompts the architects to envision a section that helps bring light into the sanctum. The staircase becomes the primary element of organisation and a play of levels ensures that the limited space does not become a spatial compromise.
The articulate internal space takes a radically different approach. Resisting the impulse of creating a white box, the architects choose a dark, restrained palette to adjust with the limited light available within. The permeable section responds to this challenge by creating opportunities for openings in the external skin. The comfortable interior space wraps around the preferences of the family that occupies the house.
The architects also address the sense of a ‘personal space’ within: specific gestures and minutiae that engage the senses through everyday acts of cooking, reading, resting and meeting. The staircase, devoid of a railing, serves as a space of opportunity by itself. The interior space refrains from the ‘fit it all’ agenda as demands of contemporary life are overlaid on a constrained space. Instead, the interior space supplements the simple pleasures of domestic life.
In the limited spatial opportunity afforded by the context, the design empowers the family to experience the house in its overwhelming potential with elements of comfort and joy interspersed with a qualitative idea of space committed to privacy, intimacy and seclusion, and therefore, Kavidhan by Studio Black is a Citation Project for The Merit List.
Images & Drawings: courtesy Studio Black; Photographs: © Vikrant Dashputre