The southern direction of shamutai’s house dawns a long narrow spine with houses on both sides.The spine marks its end by a vegetable farm right opposite to the house of shamutai. The houses here share close knit relations to Shamutai and hence even shamu tai's house kind of becomes the leader and spine flows from her house. All the houses share a similar kind of type. A verandah which embarks the entry to the house, a multipurpose room and a kitchen. They have common utility spaces in the spine as well.
Studying further I discovered that the idea of privacy is absent within the spine. The verandah is a common and semi open space while the house becomes a closed and private space.
There were two types of verandahs one used as storage and other used for gathering and interacting.
Further I tried studying some patterns..
The 1st one is Talking Pathway
The pathway of the spine becomes very interactive due to the spatial configuration of the houses touching it..the narrowness and the verandahs of the house facing the spine make it talkative
The next pattern was Animal Affordance
The spine in minimal and unnoticeable ways creates healthy atmospheres for the animals to inhabit
The next pattern was the vegittative patch at the end of the spine. The absence of homes and presence of enormous vegetation experientially makes the space peaceful.
Not only such patterns but even the way they used locally available wood was stupendous. They used it for making a frame, a wall and a fence.
To use it as a frame they placed one log above the other.For making a fence they weaved together the barks of trees and karvi.
The spine may have a lot of houses but most of them share blood relations.
1 is shamutais house
67 are blood related to 1
2 is blood related to 7
Houses 4 and 5 are closely related to the other houses
3 is a goat shelter
8 9 10 are common utility spaces
The lifestyle of the people is shared.
8 is kitchen and 9 10 are bath spaces these are used by houses 1267
Food during festivals and small occasions is prepared at house 1 or 6 for houses 1267
During mass occasions and events 8 is used as the kitchen
Houses 2 and 7 spent their evenings recreating in house 1 or 6.
What is a contemporary home for such a situation?
Shared living is the idea of the home currently. The family is divided in the spine, having common spaces making the pathway interactive also creating small affordances for animals to coexist.
The idea of home for the people of the spine is shared. Their homes get spilled to the spine as they have common utilities happening in the spine. They do have their private houses yet their facilities are shared. The idea of privacy gets hidden somewhere due to the shared resources. The way they are moving in future also shows that they are not looking forward to cutting down on the idea of sharing resources.
PROGRAMME:
Common bathspace
Common kitchen verandah
The whole spine is the site for intervention as the family resides in the spine. Easy for them to inhabit the new spaces if they are within their neighbourhood.
Bathspace- The site is the existing space because it happens right in between the cluster making the spine interactive. Secondly there's a farm besides so the gray water can drain easily there.
Kitchen Verandah- The site happens at the end of the spine where there is an open patch. This space completely fills the gap of experiencing nature in its pure form.
Beginning with the process of bath space.
These are the iterations I tried.
In the 1st I consolidated the current plinth and added a bathspace connected to the previous one creating two common courtyards in between
In the 2md one I isolated one of them to make more open space
In the 3rd one I isolated all of them as a result of which one can easily meander through the bathspaces and also find their privacy.
Here I tried to play with the dimensions of the bath spaces to have large open spaces which resulted in a similarity in the volumes of the bath spaces.
This is the final plan of the design.Where the different dimensions of the bathspaces makes meandering more expirencial. A reed bed sys is made behind the bath spaces to provide for effective drainage and use of gray water. Seats have been incorporated to the walls of the backspace to make the space flexible.
The section of the space brings out how the roof of individual bath space is floating above creating a gap between the wall and itself for light and ventilation. The big common roof is at the same height of the neighbouring structure to maintain a continuity in type.
The axo shows that the main roof is a vegittative roof
Further such a vegittative roof and the landscape around and in the space makes it light and merge in with the type of the forest and village.
The model shows how the spaces work volumetrically. The main roof binds all the 4 isolated spaces together making the space porous.
The framework for the roof is inspired by the current way of using natural wooden logs.
The flooring of each bathspace is made of large stones filled with small pebbles and gravel for better drainage of gray water to the reed bed system.
Every bath space has a water tank and wooden log for keeping accessories. Clothes can be hung on walls as they are only 1.8m high.
A wash basin is also added outside every bath space for better utility.Its a fusion of kadai kept over a wooden log.
To begin with the design of kitchen verandah, I observed certain activities that spark the idea of shared living. During normal days they were sitting and chatting, sleeping, talking . During special occasions preparing food, cooking it and eating would happen together.
next please.
Here in the 1st iteration a leveled plinth with moveable elements were used as affordances.
Further I tried working with adding one higher plinth level that wraps around a central open space. In the 2nd iteration I tried having raised platforms in the center while in 3rd I added a small water storage. But both of these felt rigid due to the symmetry in space.
In this iteration I added more levels to accommodate more activities simultaneously and also tried to make the space flexible. This is what I chose to go further with.
The idea of the roof is again similar to one in common bath space which is that it covers the space and doesn't feel heavy as well. These are the iterations I tried.
I chose to go with the forward slanting one because different levels of plinth haVe different experiences due to the angle and curvature in the roof.
Plinth is made of Indian Patent Stone
Columns are wooden logs
The roof is made of coconut leaf weave.
The colour green is given for space to merge in the vegetation of the landscape and forest.
The max height of the plinths is not very high; this is to make the space feel light. The roof also makes the space feel porous.
This plan brings out that a certain plinth height is reserved for certain affordance but due to many such levels as such there is no restriction as well.
This is how the space gets used during a normal day.
This is how the space will be used during an occasion. For preparing food a platform height as well a chula height has been provided because the people there prefer both ways.
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