Architects’ Office cum Home, Bengaluru
Architect: mayaPRAXIS
Citation Note:
This residence cum studio for the architects sits on a restricted urban site – a typical plot in a densifying urban setting of Bengaluru. With limited opportunity to reference the context, the building looks inwards to create a rich internal environment for the house and the workplace. The architects intelligently take advantage of the problem through a strategy that enables the building to retain its identity irrespective of the eventual and anticipated changes in the surrounding fabric.
Built from compressed earth blocks made of excavated soil from the site, the structure is a simple concrete frame with masonry infill. The hidden cavity of the rat-trap bond enables the architects to insulate the building and the orientation of fenestrations ensure permeability of light to the core of the space. The plan is organized in the space between these windows and the central volume in an interesting resolution of the seemingly awkward angles.
The materials – brick, concrete, wood and steel are allowed to define the language of architecture in their raw form. The complex section of the building reveals the advantage of keeping the private spaces closer to the ground thus making the terrace space public and accessible as an open-to-sky relief community place for the office.
The compact urban site is an omnipresent typology in our cities. Using basic architectural and material devices, the architects are able to create a complex space within creating an architecture that is generative of the interior space with an idea that the eventual densification will not take away its essential identity and functionality from the project and therefore, Place mayaPRAXIS; the Architects’ Office cum Home in Bengaluru is a Citation project in The Merit List.
