This Eco-Friendly Courtyard Home in Bengaluru is Inspired by Organic Forms (House Tour).

I have always been fascinated with the description of the kutir of Rama and Sita from Ramayana. It's all about the beautiful flowers, lime boughs and the structure itself was very simple and a mud hut. Just reading the description was so invigorating. This was somewhere at the back of my mind while creating the entire space here. Kalpataru basically means the divine wish fulfilling tree. I'm architect Jaya Lakshmi, popularly called as Jaya and I run my firm Design Harmony. Today I'm going to be taking you through the design of our house and you could go to buildafire.com to get into more details of the different chapters and walkthroughs. You can even look at different drawings. We were living in the city and we were kind of fed up with the lifestyle there. Consciously we decided to move out and we came to the suburban parts of the city. This was a difficult situation because I was also the client and I'm not the only client, so my family members were the rest of the clients. Luckily the entire family is aligned with this principle of living close to nature and so the main and central aspect of the entire house was to have an open to sky courtyard where we could experience nature in its entirety. So the site is located in the suburbs of Sajapur in Bangalore. The plot is 50 feet width and 110 feet long. It's an east facing plot so the front part of the garden we wanted to be more of an ornamental garden. Although the gate is here we didn't want it to be directly opposite the main so we have a winding pathway which also makes it interesting. You have an entrance veranda. We have also followed Vastu in principle and we wanted the northeast to be open. So the entrance foyer overlooks the courtyard and there is a skylight right in the entrance foyer over the landscape here. The living room as such has a window. It's a bay window which is like a triangular window and that's again with the intention of looking out. We have a central courtyard which actually forms the primary focus for the entire house. So since the courtyard is three-sided, the fourth side we wanted it to open out. So we wanted the illusion of actually having a larger garden outside and that's the reason there is this large moon arch which kind of makes you feel as if that's going to open out into a very large garden. The moon arch is again random rubble stone. We had to create a shuttering for this. Looking at the puja, the frame that you see here, the wooden frame is also an antique sourced one but we couldn't get to this size. So again we had to upcycle it by adding small pieces of wood to the existing frame. The wheel that you see in the puja is a handcrafted konark wheel in stone. My entire office team was here and we sat and we did the entire courtyard flooring with leftover jaisalmer stone and we've used some mosaic tiles. One of the main features of the open plan was also to have a completely open kitchen. So we have an island kitchen which is actually facing the courtyard. We have always enjoyed sitting down on the floor and having food and so we decided to go with a low high dining table which is 15 years old. The puja, the kitchen and the courtyard kind of form the central space for activity and we in fact actually did conduct our elder daughter's wedding haldi function right here in the courtyard. Since it's open to sky, the other challenge was how do you still protect yourself both from theft and from weather and so we have the eaves for the open sides of the living and the kitchen. To protect ourselves from the insects or mosquitoes and from theft, we also have a grill and mesh above. As soon as you come up, you look down into the courtyard on the first floor. There is a library space come an office space. So in the first floor, we have two bedrooms. So this space that you're in is my bedroom. What's interesting about the space is it's got this bay window which is an extended double bed because it's on the west side of the building. We've had to reduce the amount of sunlight that comes through into this bay window. This wall has been finished with limestone plaster. So this lime plaster has been done with a self-design. So there has been stencils used to create these like mural effects within this lime. This is a madras terrace roofing. The reason for doing such a roof is mainly to reduce the amount of concrete and steel being used in the roof. The flooring here is polished kota flooring which is a natural stone. There are low study tables in both the bedrooms because again culturally we prefer sitting down and doing our work. Important factor in all the bedrooms again, we have two levels of windows. One level of window is at the lower level which is like a top hung window. We also have clay stories with ventilators in all the rooms which open out into the courtyard. The hot air from the room goes out through the open to sky courtyard. And one more thing which we consciously avoided it was having separate balconies for the bedrooms and instead went with bay windows. All the balconies put together form our large terrace on the front. We wanted a covered space for the terrace and as well as an open space. So we wanted to do something which didn't have either steel or concrete. So this timbrel vault doesn't have either steel or concrete inside of it. We did have to use a minimal amount of 8 mm steel rods for the framework that can be reused in the roofing screen or it could be used in that. This is made of 20 mm terracotta tiles. The question is and how does it stand? So it stands without collapsing because of the way the shape has been designed and that's the reason you see the multiple arches. So they are load-bearing and this is a parametric form. This also happens to be the favorite spot for our cats. On the second floor we have one more room which is kind of a multi-purpose room and this room actually opens out onto a much larger terrace on the second floor. I have a love for organic forms. If you look at the plan it is totally rectilinear. We still wanted to achieve the feeling of fluidity. So to achieve this we used vaults. So in the first floor we had the timbrel vault. In the second floor as well we have another vault over the staircase, the headroom and the second floor room. So it's a continuous vault which is facing south. Vault roof also has a skylight above the staircase and we also have an interesting organic window here which is a fixed glass window. This was again for something like a peephole or viewing from the second floor when you're coming up and down. This fluid form we've continued all the way from the first floor carrying it till the second floor. This was a big challenge because this here again we needed to have a curved MS beam to achieve this because if we did it separately then you lose that continuity and fluidity. Talking about the materials we decided to go with stone masonry on the front walls. The rest of it is all CACB walls. We have made them with the soil which comes from the site and they were hand pressed with the hydraulic press right here at the site. Generally CACB blocks are made with a mixture of soil, sand and cement. We've replaced the cement with lime and lime actually gains strength over the period of time. We've also used ayurvedic herbs in the making of the CACB blocks. The parapets that you see those are CACB walls finished with mud plaster. We have terracotta jallies on the eastern facade and these terracotta jallies actually open out into the courtyard bringing in diffused light as well as diffused breeze. We have used mostly all the wardrobes, all the storage. Everything is in the locally available Sadarali store. The shutters we have used a material called birch ply. In the kitchen over there we have used the painted shutters for the birch ply but the paint again is eco-friendly paint. It's a chalk paint. So all the doors and windows are either recycled or upcycled. Not only the doors and windows even the staircase railing is upcycled. So we had to again join two pieces of balusters and there is a slight color difference that you will notice in the staircase railing that's mainly because of the joining of two pieces of those old balusters. So one was teak wood and the other is rosewood. So we have been thinking of living outside of these four walls in the apartment. So that dream has come true and this is really a green place and it works very well for even my work from home. So that was my only requirement that I need a workspace at home here and that's done very well. Oh we're just loving every moment of staying here. It's exactly what we wanted.