Architecture News Plus (ANP) – Architecture and Design Magazine

Nair House

This is a project by Rajeev Agarwal + Architects and it is located at Gurgaon, India. There are nine images for Nair House.

: © Anshuman Sen

Project images

Designer's statement

The clients’ brief asked for a compact 3-bed room home with spaces for various activities, introverted and sheltered from the elements as well as neighbourhood activities.

The homes turn inward towards the more private rear gardens. The front garden, a result of the zoning byelaws is usually ornamental in nature with little activity in them. The harsh, arid North Indian climate motivated the architect to design an internal space, sheltered from the outside.

The other concern for the architect was the design brief, which asked for ‘rooms’ for different activities and could have easily resulted in a spatial fragmentation within the house. The functional program was resolved by locating the different activity spaces on the periphery while the centre was left as a void.

‘Shot blasted’ textured white sandstone is used to clad the major volumes. The other material used is a polymer based wall coating with crushed stone used for pigment. The windows are made of aluminium curtain glazing system. The staircase is made of steel and timber treads, suspended by vertical slim stainless steel. The internal floors have a combination of White terrazzo and hardwood. Ceilings have a combination of white and dark timber finishes. All the toilet walls have ‘flamed’ textured granite stone cladding. The woodwork of the doors has some elements of ‘rough sawn’ timber.

The house is designed on a simple orthogonal grid. The centre is pierced by an inverted frustum of a cone. The walls in the peripheral rooms meet the curved and sloping wall of the central drum at various incidental acute angles. The wall of the central ‘drum’ or ‘cone’ slopes outward and is ringed by a peripheral row of glass blocks diffusing the interior volume with a gentle light throughout the day and ‘cold cathode light’ ring at night. This volume is experienced from all ‘private spaces’ while traversing through the house.