KOCHI: In the yesteryears, for people who were engaged in agrarian pursuits, a house was just a place to rest at sundown. With changing times, a common man’s aspirations of a dream house have undergone a sea change. While all the design features once used in traditional homes might not be adaptable in today’s lifestyle or climate, they certainly had their advantages. The terracotta tiled roofs, walls made of mud and limestone which were more porous and hence did not trap the heat inside were tailored to suit the humidity and local temperature. Windows with wooden shutters were effective means of controlling the amount of sunlight that came into the house.
“It is the ideas of the client that create a good home. That, coupled with the freedom given to an architect can lead way to comfortable living spaces,” says Roy Antony a veteran architect. With more clients realising the luxury of being close to nature, the demand for courtyards and lightwells that bring in elements of the outdoors have seen an increase recently. While there might not be an ideal design that suits all, intelligent architecture is the need of the hour. Kunjan Garg of RGB Architecture Studio, based in Kochi, is one such designer who takes the concept of bringing the outdoors home, or in her words’, “Developing a landscape scene that develops into a micro-climate by itself.”
When asked about their design aesthetic, Kunjan says: “Our work depends exclusively on the product in hand. It is influenced by the site, the client, the requirements, the economy of the project and the kind of skills we have at hand,” she quips. One of their projects was a house for the Koras, who were returning to Kerala after years of expat life. “They wanted a place to retire. Specifically, an emotional retreat. The region was surrounded by trees in the neighbourhood. For us, it was about how our architecture would utilise those elements. How to make a public zone into a private one. How to take advantage of vegetation that exists and provide for more.
Accordingly, the house was designed to create a sense of space,” she adds. While for the architect, this kind of architecture poses the challenge of integrating two extremes—the chaos of the outdoors and the luxury and organisation of indoors—those living in it get to experience a different take on ‘feel at home’. “Having grown up in a courtyard house, or a naalukettu with a nadumuttam, it was a relief to get our indoors crafted in green. Our ancestral house was redone by a firm based in Kochi. It is a luxury for us to have an indoor garden” says Sheela Sudev, hailing from Kannur.