SAMPLES OF STUDENT WORK
ANIL DADA’S LOUNGE U200142 It is rightly said, “May your home always be too small to hold all of your friends.” (Shutterfly Community, 2021). Well, this phrase holds completely true for this single bed, day-rest room of Anil quite literally. Anil is the watchman of my house who performs his daily errands and gets his daily rest in this 2.5 m by 1.2 m room. This small room dwells right beside the main gate of the house where things almost get passed by, unnoticed by the guests in the house. However, the uniqueness of the structure and ingenuity in its design is what makes it leap off the page (refer to Figure 1). The room is cuboidal in shape with its roof pitched at a height of 2.1 m from ground. Since the room is small and can get suffocating from inside, it has multiple openings for proper ventilation and security reasons. The three exposed faces of the room visible from the outside have an arched window embedded in each allowing Anil Dada to keep a watch on the house even while sitting inside. Each window is placed in a grilled frame with the main wooden sash embossed 3 cm inside. The window on the front facade has a nail jutting out from the frame (refer to Figure 2). This nail is used for hanging a cloth bag which stores the keys of all the cars in the house. There is only one way of entry and exit from the room that is a 7 feet tall wooden hinged door. The peculiar observation about this 7 feet tall door is that 2 feet of the lower part of the door is below the ground. This makes the opening height of 5 feet from ground having people to bow down in order to enter the room and causing uncomfort. The main door in the centre follows 3 large steps for the feet to touch the ground. As a result, special care is taken of the room in the monsoon season. A waterproof sheet locally called ‘tarpail’ is placed at the ground level above the steps to prevent rainwater seepage. However, since the structure is 30 years old, the wood of the door has undergone cavitation creating several random holes on the bottom side of the door. As a result, rainwater still manages to seep in and clog the place. The entire structure is built up of concrete with the external walls cladded with white Banswara marble, imported directly from the Banswara village in Rajasthan. Interestingly, this stone matches the one used in the entire exterior of my house. The roof of the room is not flat and is grooved to avoid rainwater to settle and get drained down to the ground. It is made up of a local stone, customized and painted red, in contrast to the white Banswara marble. Figure 1: Sketching the Details of the Exterior Note. The sketch highlights placement and overall proportions of the elements. It also gives an idea about the structure and material of the walls and roof. Copyright @ 2021 by Suvidhi Jain.
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