Architects: SPASM Design Architects
Area: 15078 ft²
Year: 2023
Photography: Umang Shah
Manufacturers: Amaze Marbles, B&B Italia, Defurn, Ditre Italia, FLOS, Flex Form, Fusion Access, Sound smith, West Elm
Lead Architects: Sangeeta Merchant, Shashank Patil, Divyesh Kargathra, Sanjeev Panjabi
Lead Contractor: Eleven Engineers
Structural Consultants: DUCON Consultant Private Limited
MEP Consultants: DUCON Consultant Private Limited
Landscape Consultants: Professional Landscape Consultants
Carpentry: Krishna Interiors
The 2023 architecture project by SPASM Design Architects interplays seclusion with openness, achieving a remarkable balance suitable for a multigenerational family in Ahmedabad. The design carefully negotiates outward views with an introverted plan, ensuring privacy while promoting connectivity to nature. This structure, encompassing living, sleeping, and entertainment areas, emphasizes environmental responsiveness and thermal comfort through innovative architectural features such as a vertical brick jaali, a three-floor courtyard, and sustainable material choices.
The project is designed as a balance between visibility to the external environment and internal privacy. It accommodates a multigenerational family and their staff within a secure compound. The challenge was to design every living, sleeping, and entertainment area to be open to the outside without compromising privacy. The key architectural concept involved enclosing the fragmented layout with a sleek, box-like screen of vertical brick jaali.
At the heart of the home is a three-story courtyard void featuring a mesh pavilion that assists in heat dissipation, accompanied by hanging plants, a misting system, and a pergola that offers shade from the intense sun in Ahmedabad. The brick veil serves as a jaali, promoting air circulation through convection and maintaining a breathable environment inside the home.
The construction utilizes local stones, reclaimed wood, and native plants, supplemented by retractable sliding shutters. These features enable the house to function as a “living machine,” shielding the interior from dust, rain, and hot, dry winds. This design supports the diagonal movement of filtered daylight throughout the year, creating a seamless flow between indoor, outdoor, and transitional spaces.
Despite the constrained space of the plot and the compact size of the home, it provides a gratifying lifestyle closely connected with nature, echoing the domesticity and privacy seen in traditional Jaisalmer havelis.
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