Prakriti, in Sanskrit, refers to “mother nature”. This biophilic architecture cradles amidst India’s Sahyadri mountains, flanked by forest at its backside, while overlooking Mukane dam. Villa Prakriti is a quaint biophilic farmhouse reciting the connection between humans and nature. This forested sanctuary seeks not to mimic nature, but to live in its likeness, to be adaptive, procreative, and rooted. A home that blends into its natural surroundings. The first seed of thought germinated under the existing lone mango tree, which formed the instinctual nucleus, the axis mundi.
Editor’s Note: “True to its name, Villa Prakriti is a celebration of nature and rooted design. Nestled amidst a contoured landscape and thoughtfully designed around an existing mango tree, this biophilic home seamlessly blends into its serene surroundings. With a climate-responsive approach, curated materials, and spatial planning, the home doesn’t just sit in nature, it breathes with it.” ~Rajvi Dedakiya
Villa Prakriti Is A Celebration Of Biophilic Architecture | unTAG
Traversing the home on a contoured topography becomes an act of choreography, negotiating levels, unravelling spaces. Instead of flattening the ground into terraces, the house treads gently along it, a minimal cut-fill philosophy respecting the natural gradient.
The spatial configuration splits into two wings around the tree, one public, one private, connected through the mango court. The home is accessed through a meandering entrance stair, orchestrating a lyrical rise through a tropical green thicket.
The stair lands onto a brick-floored entrance canopy, greeted by the Mango tree, dappled by filtered light through a bamboo pergola. The living is envisaged as a transient threshold connecting front and rear landscapes.
The Living opens to the south, where a 10-foot-deep verandah protects the space and terminates in a trapezoidal pool that frames views of the Sahyadris. The designers shape the organic planter-bed into a built-in seat beneath an elliptical skylight, making it the defining feature of the Living. A sculptural indoor spiral stair, born through another thicket of greens, leads you to the upper bedroom.
At Prakriti, one can feel the forest breathing within and around the home through its multiple biophilic gestures, be it visual, olfactory, or auditory. Metaphorical to an earthy creature born from the Sahyadris’ fertile soil, the home with its terracotta hues, gives birth to the various green offspring.
Habitable spaces are cross-ventilated, ensuring a year-round thermal comfort. Additionally, the clay tile roofs ensure the natural escape of hot air. The designers extensively use local brick—honest, textural, and timeless- to instill warmth and tactility. They laid native, cost-effective Shahabad stone in various patterns throughout the home.
Every solution, right from massing to architectural detailing to conscious material choices, is made to achieve an ecologically and economically sustainable design. The site’s architecture and landscape together blur the boundary between built and unbuilt, restoring ecological memory and inviting the forest to reclaim its continuity. This is architecture in its most elemental form, a way of listening, inhabiting, co-existing, and ever-evolving.
The traditional clay tile roof evokes contextual rootedness, taking clues from the regional building techniques. Ethnic indoor aesthetics within a bare-basic white shell lend a sense of warm Indianness to the spaces.
Designed with climatically sensitive solar passive strategies, the home with two sloping roofs and deep overhangs, shades the harsh sun through its verandahs and balconies, and brings in diffused light through its brick jaalis. The other three bedrooms constituting the private wing are straddled at three levels, negotiated by outdoor stairs, interspersed with greens.
Fact File
Designed by: unTAG
Project Type: Landscape Architecture Design
Project Name: Villa Prakriti
Location: Igatpuri, Maharashtra
Year Built: 2024
Built-up Area: 4500 Sq.ft
Principal Architects: Gauri Satam & Tejesh Patil
Team Design Credits: Vibhu Viraj, Kavya Shah & Maanika Gupta
Photograph Courtesy: Pranit Bora
Landscape Architecture: Kavya Shah & unTAG
Engineering & Consulting > Structural: Deltacom
General Constructing: VN Developers and Builders
Engineering & Consulting > Other: Papaya Nursery
Source: Archdaily
Firm’s Website Link: unTAG
Firm’s Instagram Link: unTAG
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