RMA_internal Beauty, External Aesthetics

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INTERNAL BEAUTY, EXTERNAL AESTHETICSThe Shantiniketan building in Delhi, designed by Mumbai-based RMA Architects, organises three apartments in a way that exterior and interior spaces wrap around each other to create a sequence of spatial experiences, unfolding in their qualities of light and scale. The design ideas for this building consciously engage with issues of urban aspirations and building policies in cities such as Delhi

RMA Architects

Opposite page: layers of landscape grow on both the horizontal and vertical planes. Above and below: the building form with its openings and changing scales of courtyards, engages visually with its neighbouring urban fabric, yet using the walls, openings and courtyards optimally and within defined bye-laws

Interview with Rahul Mehrotra by Kaiwan MehtaPhotos RMA Architects

Kaiwan Mehta—The home in the city is a specific typology, especially in cities such as Delhi or Bengaluru as against Mumbai where planning, and the way land is processed in the city has defined how people imagine the home and its location within a street (often gated in the case of Delhi). How did your awareness of planning histories and cities affect the design of this house?

Rahul Mehrotra—The history of housing in the city, and more specifically Delhi, was central in imagining this project. Both the histories of Old and New Delhi informed these discussions and the question became how we could respond to both the aspiration and nostalgia for the colonial compound of New Delhi as well as the wonderful qualities of the intelligence of the traditional mohallas and havelis in Old Delhi. Naturally the challenge then was how one responded in terms of urban design, the relationship to the street as well as constructing the scale of a home.Furthermore, there were personal histories and memories to respond to. This project

exemplifies what’s happening in many of the ‘colonies’ in New Delhi where a single-family house built in the 1940s or 50s gets divided into a two-family house in the 1970s and 80s, and now each of the single-family homes in this subdivision has the potential (on account of changing laws) to potentially be divided in to a series of apartments for the third generation. So these projects or properties then carry memories of at least two generations and have to encode the aspirations of the third.Thus, keeping all this in mind we tried to balance the question of scale on the street and the overall massing on the site while trying to create a labyrinth-like quality within each apartment where spaces unfold as you move thorough each unit without the simplistic repletion of apartment over apartment. We realised, in order to do this we would need to think sectional about the problem, giving each unit the advantage of at least two levels – not just in terms of privacy, contact with nature and changing light quality, but also the views out to the city.

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PROJECTS 61domus 25 January 2014

KM—There is a precarious balance between making homes in the city completely inward-looking, and centripetal, and letting them connect with the city and the street, and the world outside. How do you understand your design approach vis-a-vis this aspect?

RM—In terms of the relationship of the building to the city – in addition to controlling the scale of the building at the street level through an entry court that mediates the transition into the interiors – we very carefully constructed a series of shared spaces that lead up to the entry. Call them porous lobbies or verandahs – we envisaged different residents in the apartments could use these spaces at different times – ranging from receiving vendors to even entertainment. This idea of a privacy-gradient is a historic attitude both in the colonial bungalow as well the traditional haveli in Delhi and is critical in softening the threshold between the public space of the street and the private interior within.But for us, the more important design strategy here is about how one can actually internalise the “ostentation” (and we mean this in positive terms) as we did traditionally. In the haveli or the traditional courtyard-house, the building gained its identity as well as its symmetry from the internal spaces organised around an open-to sky-courtyard – most often a perfectly orthogonal void. This is the complete inverse of the bungalow or the house as a freestanding object, where the imagery, identity and symmetry are derived from the facade or the external composition. It was really for this reason the building we designed is very understated on the outside with the idea that if any of the residents or owners actually wanted to transform the interior for their own self-expression, it

This page: model showing lateral section of the building, as well as the evelation of the same; process diagrams indicating the design development. Opposite page above: the formal aesthetics and siting of the building in the urban context

PROJECTS62 domus 25 January 2014

would be internalised. Today, in India, the externalisation of ostentation is problematic and can heighten the polarities that exist in such extreme forms in our society. Every society as outlets for ostentation. In India, in the past five or six decades, it has been jewellery or weddings (and this still continues) but now, in our post-liberalised economy, the built environment is also becoming one such outlet for ostentation. This aspiration is also one that through design we can’t change, but we believe we can resist. So in this apartment building, traditional types of introverted configurations inspired us and we attempted to create a spatial configuration where internal beauty is emphasised as much as external aesthetics – as the venue of ostentation, internalised!

KM—There is a very fine play of scale in the houses – they enjoy a good, narrow but large footprint but in the internal geography of these homes, the scale is very grounded. How would you respond to this in terms of defining a typology and its elements like stairways, terraces, windows, as well as in terms of the process you employed?

RM—Deceptive in its external simplicity, the interiors are rather complex. This apartment building internalises three interlocking, yet completely different, duplex apartments of 200m2 each. Named after the neighbourhood in which it is located, “Shantiniketan”, and conceptualised in tandem with the client’s desire to incorporate a central aangan (courtyard), the building form is a direct manifestation of complex internal geometries.While all three apartments cover an equal area of 200m2, each unit varies from the other through a precisely and uniquely located private duplex staircase, which in turn P

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1950 - First Generation

G+1 Level - Single Residence

1975 - Second Generation

G+2 Levels - Three Individual Residences

2013 - Third Generation

G+4 Levels - Two Multifamily Residences

This page and opposite: volumetric development of the design and the cross-sectional understanding

1 Entrance porch

2 Lobby

3 Living room

4 Dining room

5 Kitchen

6 Master bedroom

7 Guest room

8 Study

9 Powder room

10 Puja room

11 Garden

12 Planter

13 Covered verandah

14 Deck

15 Service space

16 Courtyard

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ProjectShantiniketan

Architect RMA Architects Pvt. Ltd.

Design Team Rahul Mehrotra, Robert Stephens, Payal Patel, Siddharth Nadkarny,

Prashant Saudagar

Client Neena Laroia

Civil ContractorsVanbros Construction India Ltd

CarpentryVanbros Construction India Ltd

Structural Vijay K. Patil & Associates

Plumbing and HVACArkk Consultants

LandscapeAmitabh Teotia

Location New Delhi

Area 1.486 m2

Initiation of Project2011(design phase)

Completion of Project2013 (construction phase)

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

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Above:conceptualised in tandem with the client’s desire to incorporate a central aangan (courtyard), the building form is a direct manifestation of complex internal geometries. Below: varying degrees of privacy that can be achieved

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generates a unique layout for each apartment. As if in a jugalbandi ensemble, each private stair and subsequent circulation spaces find close proximity to an internal courtyard, which draws light deep into the core of the building. Bound by an exposed concrete wall with red pigmentation, the visual texture of this internal courtyard wall is a reference to the exposed grey concrete of the external aangan wall.Located centrally in plan, and expanding in section, the aangan serves as a green ‘lung’ – a breathing space that is both aesthetic and performative. It is here that a dense repository of trees, shrubs, and creepers grow, and are visible from all three apartments. Layers of landscape grow on both the horizontal and vertical planes, and are coupled with a misting system on the aangan facade to cool it and create a humid condition in the lung, thereby insulating the building against harsh and dry Delhi summers. The green of the aangan spills into, and occupies, what otherwise would become residual setback spaces, which are required as per sanctions regulations. Through the appropriation of setbacks, these peripheral areas become functional spaces, such as an entry courtyard, an area for parking, and a garden pathway, which leads to a puja (prayer) room enveloped in green. A central core houses a common staircase, lift, and shafts for technical services – a shared infrastructure-spine around which the living spaces are organised. It is in this zone that the private entrance to each apartment is located, again creating a common ground for the otherwise diverse apartments. At the terrace level, the core culminates in a common

Above: the misting system on the aangan facade that cools it, creating a humid condition in the lung, thereby insulating the building against harsh and dry Delhi summers

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This page: the entry area, entrance court and the range of other spaces inside and outside develop a spatial language that is urban, yet private, as well as supportive of landscaped aangan that serves as a shared public space and a green ‘lung’

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entertainment space with a lotus pond that is also shared by all three apartments. This results in a unique hybrid typology that is neither apartment nor single-family home, but builds on the logic and organisational principles of both.

KM—Do you think the “jugalbandi” you mention is important and could be extended to an apartment building with more units?

RM—I think the idea that an apartment building need not be a repetitive set of ‘slabs for living’ stacked on each other is an important issue as this type is used more intensely in our transforming urban landscape. This, we believe is especially true in cities like Delhi or other cities that essentially have grown as low-rise cities and are now morphing in to a greater density through the high(er)-rise mode. Low-rise cities tend to perpetuate individuality in a positive way through form. They tend to be more incremental in the way they grow and then spawn a very particular visual culture on the street but also on the interior for personal expression. We think a city like New Delhi, and more particularly South Delhi, given the intensity of these types of development that are occurring, could develop a very particular urban texture if this type of hybrid apartment building is taken seriously in the design discourse. This is really a hybrid between the freestanding colonial bungalow (the ultimate expression for the middle class and rich India) and the apartment type, which would more naturally occur in denser urban conditions. So if one does take this hybrid form seriously then the challenge is how one can reinforce the essential aspects of both. The rationalised, efficient, repetitive quality of a stacked apartment block and the individual character of different havelis stacked on each other! We believe that sectional imagination becomes critical in doing this, and then the more perceptual aspects of views, light, materials, textures, and a connection to green etc. follow. We believe there is no upper limit in terms of the permutations and combination one can generate for this kind of interlocking or dialogue – a jugalbandi between the different apartments. The more critical question then becomes – what can the street take in terms of mass and also infrastructure? So at some point, the conversation naturally shifts to urban design and planning.

KM—What were some of your crucial learnings/experiences in terms of designing a collection of houses within an urban plot, an urban colony?

RM—The most important question for us was that within the increased Floor Space Index or FSI that is now allowed on a small plot like this, how would one fragment and distribute the mass such that the street was disturbed to the minimum?Of course the moment one sets up that as a question, the starting point becomes urban design. So for us, the learning was

This page: each unit varies from the other through a precisely and uniquely located private duplex staircase, which in turn generates a unique layout for each apartment

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This page: the apartment building internalises three interlocking, yet completely different, duplex apartments

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really about how the transformations and densification in South Delhi, largely a landscape of low-rise and low-density “colonies”, can be transformed facilitating some of the existing qualities in terms of lifestyle that they currently support, in addition to aspects such as connection to green, adequate sunlight, cross ventilation, a human scale, differing views (as one went vertical) and most importantly, individual identity. The other learning that was important was about how through design one can appropriate and integrate the legal setbacks and margins of the property (usually either left as residual or used for services) into the fundamental spatial experiences of the building. Thus, the front setback was transformed in an entry court that seamlessly integrates with the entrance of the apartment building without feeling like the front setback. Or the side setbacks, after accommodating the basic requirements for parking, transition into gardens that then support the vertical green wall. The terrace is similarly used as open-to-sky living space with green and water bodies that, besides insulating the roof, also offers an alternate landscape. And lastly, we learned that a long, narrow plot that results from multi- generational subdivisions is an interesting design challenge, but closer to many traditional urban types in India than the colonial bungalow. This then offers wonderful ways to evoke the qualities and intelligence of the historic urban house or the haveli:

Top: the core culminates in a common entertainment space with a lotus pond that is also shared by all three apartments. Right: the exposed grey concrete of the external aangan wall, with the skeletal structure for the creepers to grow on

with its rich experience of space unfolding, varying light qualities and the spectrum of differing scales. We tried to incorporate these qualities as one traverses through this property – something one does not expect when one arrives at an apartment building in a New Delhi colony!

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RMA_internal Beauty, External Aesthetics

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