Situated in the heart of the city of Ahmedabad, HS house is a compact family home with common walls on both sides. This context gets a little tricky as buildings on both sides were supposed to remain in the same situation while the house in the middle was to be broken down and built again.
While designing, another contextual tackle was that light and ventilation was only possible through the two short edges of the house and the roof. This was the defining factor behind the design, with a large court in the middle lighting up the entire house as well as its glass top being used as a hot air attractor hence creating an air draft towards the top, through the small openings at both the ends. Split levels were created to squeeze in as much of the spaces as possible in a small volume, allowing for the front of the building to lie half a story lower than the back. This also provided for an opportunity to focus more on the manner of moving vertically.
The materiality of the house is kept at a bare minimum with exposed concrete being the hints of wood being the majority of the tone. With it being used in a large quantum, the change was brought in while casting like the type of divisions, texture and shade of the concrete. Until the lintel level of the ground floor the exposed concrete used was with a black pigment and wooden strips were used to cast it, creating this dark and heavy base to the building.
This part was done with precast concrete panels to improve the speed of construction. The parts above were cast in situ with the normal light grey shade of concrete, thus creating a sense of the building getting lighter as it goes up. All the bedrooms have different patterns cast across the concrete, some with grooves inlayed with brass.
