See how an interesting brief is converted into art by mixing playfulness and sensuousness with an environment-friendly ethos by architect Gurjit Matharoo in Ahmedabad.
Imagine you’re an architect (I know everyone can’t, but since we all fancy ourselves with special powers of creation, go ahead, try…) who’s been retained by a client – who breeds fish – to build him a suburban holiday home near Ahmedabad, at the least cost possible.
Would you think of doing the following?
- Design a home where the fish and owner live together, keeping an eye on each other?
- Sink the structure below ground level and plant greenery on the roof to reduce the heat gain?
- Make arrangements to harvest rain-water and reuse it for the fish?
- Plan to turn sewage into biogas?
- Use thin concrete walls and beams to save material volume without compromising on structural strenth?
- Design and build a unique system of slats that are raised or lowered with balls to vary the amount of light and ventilation in the house?
- Propose an earth cooling tube heat exchanger and a windmill for pumping water, in the next phase?
I bet you didn’t. The ‘House With Balls’ is a much talked about, repeatedly-awarded, and proud achievement of the young and green architect Gurjit Matharoo, and his client Mahesh Mohatta.
“All sensible architecture is green,” says Gurjit when asked if being green was a major motivation while designing. “Our basic aim was to design a co-habitable place for man and fish at the least possible cost. The green elements just fitted in naturally into this philosophy.”
Built around four 9,000-litre tanks that form the core, the house is partly bunkered into the site. Projecting concrete wall planes reach out to the street to funnel you into the entrance, around which the main bedroom, bathrooms, and a caretaker’s suite are neatly compacted. As the bedroom overlooks the pool’s length, the space flares and extends into a long living room, enclosed by the glass fish tanks on one side and a garden on the other. Continuous horizontal slots are carved into both walls, but there are no windows. Instead, a system of pressed galvanised steel shutters can be adjusted to let in light and air, transforming the entire character of the space.
These shutters are operated by a system of wire pulleys counterweighted with concrete balls. The spherical counterweights were specially cast, and their random vertical movements give the facades the feel of a giant abacus whirring out of control. On the garden side, the window slot is expressed as a deep frame. This assumes many functions: as a garden seat, as steps for children to climb on, or as a bar and serving counter to entertain guests.
No matter where you are in the space, two things strike you: the box-concrete influence of legends like Le Corbusier, Corb, and Kahn; and the environmentally friendly agenda that underscores it all. Underneath a grassy knoll in the garden is a bio-gas plant (fuelled by cow dung), and storage for 50,000 litres of harvested rainwater. On the non-garden side, a rooftop terrace is accessible from a gentle slope that cradles and bunkers the house. Running directly above the living space, the terrace is like an open-air room, and from here visitors can survey the pool and the garden. ‘They enjoy the feeling of floating over a bed of lily petals while being weighed down by the baubles,’ says Gurjit. Little wonder then, The House with Balls has won numerous awards, including the AR Emerging International Architecture Award by Architectural Review, UK, 2009, and the A+D Spectrum Commendation, 2009.
As you leave the place, you understand why art is the result when architects like Matharoo attack an extraordinary brief by mixing playfulness and sensuousness against the backdrop of an environment-friendly ethos.
Matharoo Associates can be contacted at:24-E Capital Commercial Centre, Ashram Road
Ahmedabad – 380 009
Tel: 079-26577757
fax: 079-26576426
email: studio@matharooassociates.com
website: http://www.matharooassociates.com
marginal thinking
Gurjit Matharoo’s other works include the Prathama Blood Center in Ahmedabad, where the challenge was to turn a service-intensive functional entity into a playful, intuitive receptacle; and The Ashwinikumar Crematorium, located on the banks of the river Tapti in Surat, which attempts to find a valid architectural expression for a crematorium in an urban context while navigating the changing role of religion in modern society.
Courtesy: Greenlife Magazine
