The lift halts on the 11th floor, where a softly lit foyer features bright artwork on a grey concrete interior wall, a black terrazzo floor, and an eight-foot-wide door with a carved wood handle.
While The Concrete Interior Walls Guide, The Wooden Walls Store | DOT
As the wooden door pivots open, a straight wooden wall directs one towards a large, curved cast-in-situ concrete plane. This draws the eyes towards a living room flooded with natural light and further to the landscaped balcony outside.
The living room is tucked between three curved concrete walls. The first warps an existing shear wall, while the second and third cup the parent’s bath and kitchen store, respectively.
The layout of the apartment is left unaltered, with no inserts touching the peripheral walls or the ceiling. This is to let the natural light flow into the space, leaving no dark corners in the house.
Moreover, we utilised the maximum available height by leaving the concrete ceiling exposed, with its beam grid juxtaposed against the planes resting on the floor.
The solidity of concrete and wooden planes further accentuates the linear expanse of the apartment, with a large balcony and a clear opening.
While the concrete interior walls curve and guide, the solid wooden walls store everything in the house. They hold items from handwashing to crockery cabinets to wardrobes to bedrooms. Additionally, the floor modulates towards a more private part of the house as one steps up from the living room to the dining room.
The shorter side of the house spans north to south. It has a dining window on the south and double height staircase to the terrace on the north. The southern window also brings in harsh light for one half of the year.
As one draws the curtains, the dining area becomes dark. Thus, they added a skylight above and a small green pocket below to keep the space lit. Thus inducing the feeling of dining and cooking with the landscape.
Within a rather monochromatic palette, some warmth from the wood adds elegance. Additionally, a splash of bright red from the kitchen dado and the metal legs of the dining table with a black lava stone top add a modern feel to the space.
The curved staircase to the north is a structural insert in the existing apartment. As the steps fold on the external side of the curve, the internal side holds a place of worship, lit with natural light from the terrace above. At the same time, the underside of the stairs becomes a cosy reading corner for the guest bedroom, a space nestled between the entrance wall and puja.
On the western edge, overlooking the Tapi River and the cityscape, are the two bedrooms for the couple and their sons, connected by a sunken multipurpose space that serves as an extension from the kid’s room as the bi-synchronised doors pivot open.
As the curved staircase in fair-finished concrete folds upwards, one departs from a rather calm and polished interior to a rustic ground on the terrace. Moreover, the smooth, fine black terrazzo from the lower floor turns into large pieces of randomly laid black limestone.
The covered pause on the terrace is sort of a large glass gazebo, opening on three sides to three zones of the terrace. The curve of the stair within the glass extends into a low-height curved partition wall, forming a green pocket to the east; a large planter box along with a Spathodea tree, a screening wall, stepped-down seating, and a dense plantation edge punctuated with two planter boxes with trees on either side create an enclosure to the south; while a step-up zone to the west with a dining room gazes at the cityscape.
The terrace is designed as a recluse for the clients on weekends, to brunch on the shaded west, nap in the tree house-like upper deck, read in the gravelled dense court by late afternoon, and dine with the sun set. It can entertain a small or large group of friends by providing comfortable areas to socialise and celebrate.
The house features an open plan, a bare slab, a modulating floor that offers variation in scale in space, fair-finished curved concrete walls and teak wood partition walls as planes that are capacitated with some form of housing within them, handmade IPS walls, and a terrazzo floor; all have been craftfully used to evoke the quality of being minimal, consistent, and extremely rooted in the naturalness of the space.
The layout of the flooring, a 6’x6’ grid; the rested planes of concrete and wood on the floor; the exposed beam grid in the ceiling with skylights that extends the relationship of the landscaped terrace to the lower floor—all independent but harmoniously connected. The project is an overlay of multiple grids, while at the same time being off-the-grid.
Fact File
Designed by: DOT
Project Type: Residential Interior Design
Project Name: Off-the-Grid
Location: Surat, Gujarat, India
Year Built: 2023
Built-Up Area: 6996.54 Sq.ft
Principal Architects: Krishna Mistry & Anand Jariwala
Photograph Courtesy: Ishita Sitwala & Nikhil Patel
Interior Styling: Samir Wadekar
Text Credit: Krishna Mistry
Landscape: Hemali Samant
Onsite Team: Execution Team – DOT, Electrical-Crony Electricals / Automation –Littoria / HVAC-Jay air / Plumbing-Kamil Flooring- Mortar construction / Carpentry- Sohanlal Mistry
Firm’s Instagram Link: DOT
Firm’s Facebook Link: DOT
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