This 2400 Sq. ft. Chennai House is Inspired by Chettinad Homes (House Tour)
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When we started designing this house, we had taken a trip to Karekudi with our client
and we loved the aesthetic there and we felt like this can be the interior aesthetics of the house.
Karekudu came from Karekudi from Kare and kudu means a home, so that's how this came to be.
Hi, I'm Siddharth Dhoda, a principal architect at Sonali and Siddharth Dhoda
Architecture from Chennai. Today we're going to be talking about our home that we've designed, Karekudil.
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The site is located about five kilometers away from the airport in a place called Nandalalu
in a very dense residential area. It's a corner property, built up with about 5,500 square feet.
Our site is a 40-60 site with roads on the east and the south. We have these two beautiful
trees adorning our site. So we had to first find a way between the trees to enter our house.
So the first floor is a two-bedroom apartment for his parents. This side of the house houses
the formal spaces of the house and these are the informal spaces of the house. As per Vastu,
the master bedroom is going to be situated on the southwest. The living has
furniture that we reuse from the previous house and also a nice landscaped balcony that brings
in all the light into the living and dining. So as we transition from the first floor to
the second floor, we get a view of the beautiful big screen, allowing a lot of light into the
building. So as soon as you enter here, you'll enter into this beautiful Atamvadi floor living room.
There was a lot of textural layering to this entire space and that's one of my most favorite
rooms in the entire house. Once we decided that we wanted to do this very south Indian Chettinad
heritage feels to the house, we wanted to do a lot of these beautiful refurbished wooden doors
and panels and we picked up plenty of them. So these are all picked up from Karekudi, refurbished,
painted and used as a part of the decor in the entire house. Pooja is tucked in here in the
northeast corner and our beautifully designed double-heighted dining. In the dining area,
we have a lot of sources of light. One is from this bay window that we have here.
This being a double height, we also have a small skylight at the back and also a nice
fixed glass window letting in light from another direction. As you step onto the third level of the
This is the master bedroom. So I'll walk you to the master bedroom of this house. This is designed
like an ensuite because this overall room is very contemporary. We wanted to add Indian elements
even here. For example, the legs here are made in teak wood and are handcrafted with a lot of detail.
We've also put in these beautiful refurbished panels from Karekudi that are part of
the decor to accentuate the old look. So actually when we were designing this building,
we couldn't find a way to connect the parents' house with the client's house.
The only connection that we could do was from the outside. So these balconies started to get
connected and then as we went along, we decided to do a cascading balcony which helps us look
down from every floor. So visually connecting all the floors together. So we wanted a lot of
light to pass through the building. Our challenge was that it's the southern side of the wall,
so we had to somehow shade the light. So we decided to do a beautiful brick screen here
and that turned out to be the most challenging part of the project because we had come up with
a parametric design of a curve that kind of shades itself in the sunlight and gives us nice
beautiful shaded light through the building. The home is designed from Karekudi, so when we had our
visit there, we picked up a lot of materials from there. The flooring is Athangudi. We've used a lot
of granite in the house and kota in a few areas. It's supposed to be what you want to do for the
main facade. We also have cane which is a part of a lot of the furniture in the house. A lot of
soft furnishings. When we were exploring our Athangudi tiles, we noticed that a lot of diamond
patterns were used in the Athangudi tiles. So we felt like that can be a binding element in all the
floors where we use some sort of this geometry in different areas. I should say this, when we
went to Karekudi to pick up stuff, I was running 102 fever and till the very last minute, we were
not sure if we were going or not. But somehow we managed to go and they were so sweet, they didn't
let me do anything including carrying my luggage. Even though I said no, I had enough energy to
tug it along, they said no you don't, you just come. So that is the kind of journey we've had and
I think it was brilliant working with them. The amount of serium that the client had
helped us explore a lot of things in this house. This house is a testament to that and also a
testament to how good Clyde is with great projects. Rolling side. What you want me to talk?