domus 23 November 2013
LEISURE HOUSES
PROJECTS 87
Malik Architecture SITTING AS GLAZED BOXES Set on a hillock in Alibaug, an existing house acquires an interesting additional building with a dagger-like roof and an emblematic, almost-fortified exterior that effortlessly disappears half into the ground on which it sits Text Suprio Bhattacharjee Photos Bharat Ramamrutham
A few months ago I had the opportunity to engage with this startling private residence sitting atop a hillock in Alibaug, across the harbour from the city of Mumbai. That building – designed, detailed and executed by Malik Architecture with an extraordinary sense of tenacity – raised many significant questions. It sits on top of that hill, frozen just before that cataclysmic moment where it would slide down the slope. It is of course a remarkable achievement, and eye-catching beyond doubt. An interesting challenge lay ahead when the architects were commissioned to build a second house on the same site. Taking advantage of an existing excavation a little further down the access road to the first house, the architects proposed to fill this void on the site by inserting a house that disappears half into the ground.
A long stone wall sits broadside along this access road. A large opening offers access between two sunken courts. On the left are the family entertainment spaces – two enclosures veering off a raised ‘floating deck’ – one of them encased in a concrete tube that cantilevers over the pool deck below. The other smaller room finds itself surrounded partially by a court screened off the access road by the aforementioned stone wall. Moving ahead from the entrance, one walks under a glass canopy across what is the primary spatial feature of the house – a fissure or court that separates the two primary blocks and focuses one’s gaze past the careening volumes and decks to the rolling landscape beyond. Past this, a staircase along an angled concrete wall offers access to the lower level and the pool deck, while beyond lays the more public realm of
the house – the living and dining areas along with the kitchen. The living and dining rooms sit as glazed boxes within a landscape of large verandahs and overhanging roofs. The kitchen along with the powder room closes off what becomes the service zone of the house. The living room borders a large verandah overlooking the driveway below, protected in some way by a generously cantilevering steel roof that is anchored back into the concrete sub-structure. From the driveway, this daggerlike roof element becomes emblematic as one takes the turn to drive up along the stone wall that contains the excavation as well as imparts an almost-fortified exterior appearance. The private portions of the house lie below the entrance level – accessed by a staircase shielded by a hulking angular concrete mass. A third of the plan is given over to the necessity of services for a large
This spread: the staircase that leads to the semiopen court, with views of the landscape beyond
domus 23 November 2013
88 PROJECTS
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Project Name Alibaug House II Architect Malik Architecture Design Team Arjun Malik, Jiger Mehta Suzanna Machado Structural Consultants/Contractors Strudcom Consultants Pvt. Ltd. Civil Consultants/Contractors Uctpl - Unique Concrete Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Other Consultants Plumbing S S Gangan Plumbing and Fire Fighting Consultants HVAC Coolair Systems Landscape DESIGN CONSULTANTS Rain Water Harvesting MUNGEKAR ENTERPRISES Pool CONNOISSEUR SYSTEMS Cladding Vm Zinc / Vijaynath Interiors and Exteriors Pvt. Ltd. Interiors Uctpl - Unique Concrete Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Carpentry Touch Wood Décor Built–up Area 2007 m2 Construction Period 2010 – 2013
domus 23 November 2013
90 PROJECTS
house such as this – while on either side of the court, bedroom spaces find their way between the jagged walls of concrete. These spaces open up to enticing private courtyards or light-courts. But they only marginally open up to the central court. This reinforces an inert atmosphere within this court – not a positive aspect in such a large house. Perhaps the conflict between degrees of privacy has resulted in a space that is as photogenic as it will be devoid of life when not in use. Up another stairway one finds the green turf-laden roof of the house interspersed with the voids of the light-courts as well as the glazed openings for the skylights. From this level the green slope of the hillside leading up to the first house in the distance is contiguous, and reinforces the intention of this house to meld into the land as much as is possible. More solid and earthbound, this house nonetheless shares some architectural antecedents with the previous house, with its fragmented formal disposition as well as shard-like elements that seem to thrust out aggressively to spear the views beyond. Where in the previous house, steel formed the overwhelming structuralmaterial driver, here it becomes exposed concrete. Angled planes, twisted walls, thick floors form a weighty but dynamic visual and formal language. As in the first house, there are thrilling details,
This page: below, view of the pool deck; bottom, the dagger-like roof element and the almost-fortified exterior appearance. Opposite page: angled planes, twisted walls, thick floors form a weighty but dynamic visual and formal language
like the aptly named ‘floating deck’ to the left upon entering that, well, does what its moniker indicates through a ‘difficult-tobelieve-how-it-was-achieved-onsite’ tectonic articulation. From the outside, the house, despite the grey concrete, and its obvious earthbound nature, comes across as ‘light’ and airy – an experience that is reinforced by the experience of the inside – but also machine-like to an extent – not unlike the first house, that gloriously celebrated this aspect. It seems to be too ‘perfect’ and well-finished – raw edges (if any during construction) have been smoothened and the execution is of a remarkable quality – as can be seen in the ‘sharpness’ of the prow-like edges that must have been a task to build. There are obvious comparisons one can draw with other practitioners across the world, and the principal architect himself has been a part of one (the office of Londonbased Zaha Hadid). On second thoughts, a ‘raw-ness’ would have strengthened the earthbound character of this house – and especially because of the inferences that can be drawn – other than that of the ‘bunker’ that I wrote about on the earlier house. The strongest aspect of the architecture here is its allusion to geological forces – the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates, the rifts and chasms that become part of this movement, as well
as the startling formations that result from these. These sensations are evoked strongly and forcefully only in the interior spaces – especially the interstitial circulation zones, with their brooding concrete masses in deep shadow interspersed with angular shafts of light and tantalising diagonal vistas. This could be the ‘cave’ – a metaphor evoked passingly in the earlier house. Here, the complementary ‘nest’ is intertwined with this quasi-troglodytic experience. But from the outside, this ‘geological’ metaphor dissipates unfortunately. Only the central court, with its teetering cliff-like promontory hulking over the staircase, seems to reinforce that conceptual driver. One comes back to the thought that this house could have retained a raw, unfinished character in places if not across – also because of its almost pavilion-like disposition on the upper level. As a set of two houses – wherein the first one, an emphatic and extroverted piece of architecture, creates a man-made context for the insertion of the second house, a more experiential and introverted work, one can find an interesting dialogue. And they are by the same set of ‘hands’ – which makes this enticing to behold.