The House of Glass is an impractical dream in North Indian setting. But this project tries to make it true. To bring in its living room, a tree; something living. To make small spaces big and with a unity of small gestures, beckon a sense of surrealism. DBH was brought on when 6 columns and their foundations had already been put up, so the idea was simply to inquire about what can supplement, compliment and contrast; the end result is an inner dialogue of light filigree steel spans and typical brick and concrete masonry; the classical binary of the stereotomic and tectonic. The small plot is sliced into two symmetrical halves, and through the slice goes the promenade. Walking on it, encounters on the left and right fluctuate; the outer court with a patch of green, the inner double volume, a wall of glass on the left and the comfort couch on the right, a lamp on the left a kitchen counter reaching out on the right, a staircase to the left and further ahead a wardrobe on the right, then a bed and then a washroom and exiting it all, a backyard on top of which hangs attached to a gardened terrace, planted flowers drooping down.
The client, an eccentric engineer, is also a skateboarder. The house is such a boyhood club. The house grows into a home and with time the spaces are meant to adapt. The floor above which contains a small room connected to the terrace garden also bears a study hanging out of it, ‘the cockpit’. Overlooking the larger double volume, it brings a sense of exteriority to the living space. And with the lamp post and the tree and the glass wall, it cultivates a magical surrealism. The practical intentions are to imagine beautiful conditions of living in a small plot of 45’ by 20’. But the impractical dream is what makes this project one of the favourites on our drafting boards.
