1,500 sq. ft. | Compact House "Ambara" in Bengaluru, Karnataka | Wright Inspires

Today we introduce you to Ambara, a 1500 square feet compact house for a family of three people and their dog in Bangalore. As the area of the site abuts neighboring plots on three sides, the main idea was to bring in light from the central skylight. Principal architect Pratima Sittur narrates the entire design logic and layout. To know more about the project story of this house, click on the link mentioned in the description below. It will take you to our where you become a member and download the full pdf ebook including the detailed floor plans, section elevation and dimensions and the material palette. You can download 200 plus pdf ebooks of the house's pan India. Our members also get to watch the full video with the architect walking through the house explaining the material palette in detail. Till then I hope you enjoy this video. The whole home is designed around an aperture which connects the home to the sky. The home is aptly named as Ambara which in Kannada means the sky. This home was very organically evolved. The entire process was a reciprocation or was a response towards the context of the site, towards the client's functional requirements and the aspirations. So this is a typical three-bedroom home which had to work good for a modern living. It's a compact plot in a typical residential layout in Bangalore. The interesting part of the plot was a lovely hungay tree, a very happy tree which had a great canopy. To the diagonal corner was a cute little playground. The whole home is designed as a open floor plan and you are welcomed by the volume. The space that is filled with light, so this light kind of brings in a sense of dynamism into the space and different times of the day, different times of the month and the year the light keeps moving. It kind of creates a pattern on walls or other elements which engages the user in some kind of dialogue. So we kind of create our own world in the little plot that we have. We created a few transition spaces to stay away from the noise of the road but stay connected with the street with just the gateway. We have screened this bedroom opening with a nice granite wall and that being the tree there so the noise from the road is not penetrating deep inside the house and we enter in deep inside to this transition space where we leave out everything that belongs to the outside out. We are welcomed by this main entry door and this is the volume that we see together once we enter the house. On the right side is the formal living next to is the kitchen which is quietly separated with a partition which has wood and strips of glass. The kitchen is a parallel kitchen which has a little utility for all the other activities. Once you have an open kitchen you do get help from everybody else in the house. You are part of every conversation with be it guests or the little time that you have in the evenings where you cannot be away from the family. The entry into the bedroom and the toilet is very well hidden from the common spaces of the living kitchen dining areas. So we have this glimpse of sky and the volume and the open floor plan which takes away that feeling of being compact and the space really explodes. The stairs here take you up to the above floor. The sheer sense of space that is welcomed by the sunlight kind of invites you kind of welcomes you and you start belonging to the space. The first floor there is a master bedroom which is towards the front of the house with this beautiful window looking at the playground and again an angle window to look out with a very well designed wardrobe spaces which takes care of the requirement of the client and an attached toilet. And on the right we move on to a bridge and the home office. Another approach was not to feel very closed in terms of private rooms. We kind of tried always to open up and connect spaces. This whole first floor is very well linked with the ground floor spaces. Here you look down at the dining space below here. Here is the kids room with an attached toilet with necessary storage spaces that is required functionally and a very interesting link of the bridge takes you on to this kind of a walkout space which is the beautiful laundry utility for the house. The study has an interesting door to exit into the terrace garden. We designed this flap door which is in two halves and which is a nice solid door which needs to protect you from the outside in terms of security. So this door when you open the single flap will act like a window and aperture which connects you to the outside and when you open them together as a doorway then you walk up the stairs to get to the terrace. At many places we have tried to bring in natural light on the eastern side, western side so to ensure that the home is well lit during the day and during the summer and winter times and there are times when on full moon days the moon also starts trying to come inside the homes which is a most celebrated time when we start looking at the night sky. Lower level is a basement space where a space of utility is well dug into the earth and this is a very naturally insulated space. The multi-activity space in the basement kind of allows the family to entertain people and it kind of gives space for yourself without having to have distraction from the immediate neighbours. We have this curved wall and a kind of a curvy stairs that takes us down which takes us back to the memories of an open vents of our traditional architecture. Here we have tried to do the basic walls with the kind of materials which gives that sense of nature around us so the margadi pink stone walls which are along the curved stair course takes us on a journey. The home which is a place to rest, relax or to kind of settle down is now taking you on a journey of memories to the wonderful time that you have spent in various locations. The brick in a way brings that sense of touch and smell of the soil that you see in the open fields. The dash of red I think it is in all of our genetic memories it kind of excites you from deep within. At the ground level you kind of see a combination of organic pattern and straight walls and we kind of see different materials used at places where one can appreciate the usage of material and so the exposed walls in the living turned out as brick walls and the one with the stairs turned out as stone walls and rest of the things which are very functional remained as clear plastered walls. We have always found that these filler slabs work very good in saving the concrete that you use in the roof slabs but also they work wonderful when we need to do large span structure so here you see that filler slab and the ribs that you see here between the blocks are the places where the structural steel runs. We have tried to use the natural material for the flooring and there is no involvement of energy in making of these materials. We have tried to get the best possible ventilation which will minimize the use of AC it kind of reduce the maintenance cost and the energy that is involved. The first floor you see a lot of white space which kind of is a void which connects the spaces below and most of the south east and west walls were of brick where the sunlight was harsh on the exposed walls and an overall vaulted roof span from the right side to the left side with the openings for the skylight that you see here. Flooring is parquet wooden floor which is very warm at the feet and which gives the sense of private space. Locating the windows was almost a decision on site and through the day there is this magic of light that keeps happening working in favor of any activity so this whole house kind of becomes like a canvas for the everyday activity of the clients. It is very therapeutic to stay in spaces where you invite nature so what is that natural element that I can get when I build in a city and the first thing is the sunlight. It livens up the space so much so the sunlight has a big role to play and when you have a terrace you have a little greenery in the terrace and you're making up for the footprint that you are building and in your terrace space with that greenery and you have the birds and butterflies that come on your terrace so it is possible to live close to nature it is possible to bring in that natural element into the homes even in the cities and we all should look at this approach of building.