Axis House

Location: Bangalore, India
Photo credits: Tulsi

The existing house was a ground floor structure with two bedrooms, a living room, dining room and a kitchen as a linear entity, in the north-south direction.

The requirement was to create three bedrooms, a private family room and attached service quarters, which meant adding a new floor and reorganizing the ground floor. We started by clubbing smaller rooms to make larger, airy spaces. A vestibule was combined with the living room, making it larger. This was repeated with the kitchen & store room.

This lay as a singular space along the north – south axis. An east-west axis was created to break this linearity, also for cross-ventilation. The staircase and a green area were integrated into this. Part of the first floor was demolished for a skylight at the top most level to highlight the intersection of both the axes. The new flooring material helped accentuating this area. The staircase block rises high to keep out the west sun and the air vents below helps in constant circulation.

The roof was made using hollow clay blocks resting on concrete joists in a metal frame. The air cavities inside the clay blocks also help keeping the house cool.