Utsav is an urban garden home, which oozes positive energy & embraces the cultural beliefs & nuances of the owners. Build in a tight 5 cents land, with a cluster of concrete buildings around, like stacked houses, offices & large godowns, it was upto us to create all what we require within the plot making the most out of challenges & constraints.
Clients Subbu & Priya, wanted a house for their parents who were living in a nearby apartment. They have long lost their nostalgic memories of being in a traditional neighbourhood with lots of plants, greenery, a Kolam space, a thulasi thara and a lot more. Utsav is an attempt to recreate all these, through a very urban & contemporary response.
The house is in three levels. Frequent floods in the area & the lack of natural sunlight in the ground space with tall compound walls all around, made us re-visit the idea of the ground floor as the main living floor. The central floor with a welcome garden terrace was conceived as the main living floor. Their bedroom, living dining room, Pooja, kitchen & the open terrace for the tree bed & putting kolam on floor make the space just enough for them to be secure, safe & happy. The lower floor is for the guest room & a library while the upper floor is for Subbu & Priya & their two sons, which also has a long garden terrace attached to these.
The sectional connection between the second-floor garden terrace & ground floor garden terrace, both covered with a playful steel mesh detail & garden creepers fosters a multilevel interaction within the house.
Four bedrooms with spacious toilets, two living spaces, multiple garden terraces and two car parking all within just less than 5 cents was quite a challenge. The cleanliness of the space is achieved through careful articulation of the spaces one above the other, but bend playful with the semi open garden terrace.
The stairs inside connect the house among all three levels. While a stair outside takes the guests directly to the entry terrace of the mid floor. Parents can conveniently use the lift from the car porch to the entry terrace. The kid’s bedroom in the mid-level also has a small mezzanine tucked inside the roof. Utsav is one such residence where articulations in sections made a lot more relevance than in the plan.
The traditional palette of materials, furniture, fabric & curios bring back their nostalgic memories of their ancestral home, while living in a very contemporary space with all modern convenience. The green trellises ensure we have greenery in all floors of the house.
With buildings all around, so agonisingly nearby, the garden terrace is a breather, which ensures privacy, security, ventilation, light & openness. Utsav is an inward-looking house if a new genre, where we attempt to create a traditional, cultural & natural oasis within a concrete jungle.
Utsav, is a space where they feel belong to, as it is so personalised to their life & culture and yet quite responsive to the surroundings and climate.