The Equipoise

1] Discuss the user profile chosen. The user profile is of a real life family presently living within the urban sprawl of Mumbai city. The grandparents are aged 59 and 56 respectively. Both are physically active with no major health issues. Grand father has a local business of timber supply. Grand mother is a home maker. The son, aged 32 has a condition of dwarfism. His height is 4 feet 7 inches. Apart from the symptoms related to dwarfism (bow legs, short trunk and enlarged head), he has no other significant health challenges and is infact regularly engaged in day to day activities. He assists his father in the family owned business. He is married and his wife is 30 years old. She doesn't have the condition of dwarfism. She is a school teacher by profession. They have 2 kids. The boy is 7 years old and studying in primary school. The daughter is 5 years old and is now in pre primary schooling. Both children are normal with no condition of dwarfism.

2] Elaborate on the lifestyle imagined for the chosen user. The family is a well to do middle class family. The kids are of school going age. The boy leaves home by 8am after breakfast. Returns home by 2pm. Naps in the noon and spends the rest of his time playing around the house and outside. The girl attends pre primary schooling for 4 hours from 12pm. The husband and father are involved in the same family business. They leave for their office by 10am and return by 7pm. They love spending time with kids once back. The family room is where they spend time together. The wife is a school teacher who works in a nearby school from 8am to 4pm. She attends to the kids once she is back. Alongwith the mother in law, they attend to the household chores through the day.

3] What strategy have you adopted in your design to ensure the basics of light and ventilation inside the building? Considering the humid nature of the city and relatively longer summers and negligible winters, the prerogative is to address the internal thermal comfort of the house with little recourse to artificial cooling. Owing to the nature of the planning, wherein the house is landlocked on 3 sides and openings available only on the South, the biggest challenge is to tackle the harsh South heat and glare. Modular terracotta facade: Understanding the ancient vernacular practice of using terracotta as a construction material, we have devised the facade by customizing and creating a terracotta block prototype. Terracotta is a natural clay material and helps in thermal ventilation. Each block has been designed in a way so as to cut the South glare, filter the harsh heat and let in only the soft sunlight. The slope of the tiles is designed so as to ensure monsoon rains don't percolate inside. To add a contextual play to the facade, each of the 3 frontal sides of the block have been stained with natural colour pigments, as an ode to idyllic heritage lane of Kotachiwadi. That the facade was inspired by the butterfly changing its colour and the modular terracotta design helps achieve that colour change As one moves from one end to another Roof: Since the house draws ventilation from the South facade only and since South brings in the maximum heat in a tropical location like Mumbai, it was prerogative to create natural air flow vents to prevent wind stagnation and hot air pockets. The roofing is designed with customized terracotta porotherm shingles. These singles have air vents within them. This helps in creating an escape for hot air. This also ensures the house breathes at all points. The shingles are placed in such a way that they don't obstruct the natural flow of the roof slope.

What aspect of your design anchors it to the city chosen? Kotachiwadi is a 19th century oasis of heritage precinct within the metropolis city of Mumbai. A little sleepy, old town surrounded by skyscrapers staring down. The neighbourhood has a strong reminiscence of Portuguese settlement and the local fisherfolk community (Koli). Our proposal is a design insert that respects and celebrates the contextual influence of the neighbourhood alongwith adopting local materials and traditional design practices to ensure thermal comfort within a landlocked home. Terracotta and porotherm clay shingles were widely used in Mumbai, along the 19th and late 20th century. They lost relevance as these were predominantly cottage industries. The usage of customized tri colored terracotta blocks along the facade and hollow porotherm clay bricks is an ode to the city's lost architectural practices. The design interprets the aesthetic value of the neighbourhood, adopts the vernacular building materials and yet retains its own individuality within the modern era.

5] How can such a design in your chosen city be made at a low cost? The proposal is designed used locally available and locally made materials. The terracotta clay facade has been a part of vernacular architecture. They are easily customizable. Effective cost of terracotta facade works upto 30% cheaper than a glazing facade which is wide spread in the city and is also not sustainable. The roofing using porotherm clay blocks is 40% more cost effective than the usual RCC roofing. The interior materials used are mostly local, readily available materials. The manufacturing of the terracotta and clay blocks is primarily a cottage industry in Mumbai. If this receives a mass scale support, the production can increase and costs can further be checked.

6] How can the suggested lifestyle based spaces be used to give a modern definition for a house in the contemporary problem of space crunch? Space crunch in a metropolitan urban fabric is a mounting challenge. The solution is to create flexible spaces, zones instead of rooms and multifunctional spatial solutions. With technology and improved hardware, we can easily move a partition wall at the tap of a switch. Spaces that adapt to a particular usage at one point of the day and convert to another at night. Identifying the functional requirement rather than dedicated spatial requirement and creating humble spaces for the need instead of dedicated rooms.

Looks amazing

Outstanding

interesting panel

Good work!!