The renovation and extension of the 40 year old house with a floor added on the top was designed to mark its own identity from the outside but also as a solution to add the new to the old without radically transforming the house from the way it has visually responded to the street for many decades. Once upon a time the streets of Bangalore were quaint, warm and had a familiarity passed on from generations. As the city grew to become a global Information Technology center the vernacular fabric of our streets rapidly depleted as the old made way for the new. The vernacular builds a context which lends definition to our streets and our lived eco system.
The client’s brief to the architects was to logically partition the ground floor from the first floor into two homes with minimal external alterations and add a new floor at the second level. The design focus of the renovation was in the mezzanine and extended new second floor. The ground floor would be lived in by the parents and the floors above would be for the son’s family.
The son’s unit is entered at the ground floor mezzanine through a single flight of staircase from a car park into the formal living room. The new additions have been symbolically painted with bright colors on the exterior to give it a visual identity and differentiation from the old house. The earlier family room at the mezzanine level was now converted to a formal living room. A few steps above is the first floor with the existing bedrooms. Shuttered windows that once visually divided or opened the mezzanine to the first floor were torn down to visually unite the two levels and to expand the visual depth of experience. A folded false ceiling at the mezzanine level breaks the high volume of the formal living room and unites it with the first floor in scale.
The existing staircase takes one from the living room to the newly added second floor which houses the new additions of the home. The second floor opens into an open space in the center which is flanked by the newly added spaces of the house. This floor becomes the social and entertainment center of the house.
A pitched roof caps the house from the top to visually align the addition with the sloping roofs of the old. The underside of the new roof has a false ceiling which folds into two planes and spreads across the newly added floor to bring in visual unity to the whole space.
The newly added floor is divided into two levels to negotiate an existing inverted beam. A red painted metal column salvaged from an old street light and a wooden beam becomes the visual fulcrum of this floor. The raised level has a study and a prayer room which is placed to occupy the central space in the entire floor. The enclosed volume of the prayer room has been scaled down in height to make the pitch roof independent and not obstruct its visual form or the passage of light.
A bright colored bar area is designed as a transition space between the Multipurpose space and the Family. A large portion of the second floor has been retained as an outdoor terrace and has been intentionally placed in the front of the site so that the new volumes don’t impose upon the original elevation of the house. A water body and a swing create an intimate nook for conversations or personal introspection.
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