This Modern Home in Uttar Pradesh Seamlessly Brings Nature Inside (House Tour)

Meerut as a city is developing rapidly. It's in sort of a flux where aspirations are high yet it wants to stay rooted in simplicity and a very slow pace of life. The house inherently had to reflect that. Hi, I'm Dipanshu and I'm Surbhi from Sian Architects and today we are walking you through Twin Villa in Meerut. For detailed ebook and chapters, please visit buildify.com. Link is in the description below. Twin Villa is designed for two brothers who wanted to share resources. So what really started like a completely different school of thought for two brothers became like a unified design where landscape became like a tying element for both the homes. For me, like the priority was calm, serene space. I think so as per, according to my husband, it was a vastu. Even I insisted for a lot of green space. If I got up in the morning, I should see all the green spaces around me. Outer plot area of the Twin Villa can be looked at as a skewed square almost. In terms of planning, we decided to open the build from the north. The whole exterior driveway and the flooring that you see is all granite. It's absolutely durable. And it also plays off very well with the shadows that the green creates on it. This is a double height foyer and this space is a double height space as well, a volumetric cut. So once you come into the foyer, you see the depth of the home. After this partition, you also see the dining space. Then you see the staircase behind. And as soon as you come in, you see the feature wall, which is done in a framing of SS. And then the board has been cladded in different angles. Beautiful textures like anti-gold finishes and rough stucco finishes have been used to highlight and make this wall a part of the beautiful foyer that we have here. There is this rattan cane finish partition to hide the puja behind. So you see these beautiful tall panels of approximately 10 feet height. And they are all hung on the two sides of the wall, having no touch to the floor and the ceiling. You have the former drawing room facing the east and the north. And it has views to plumeria trees. It's abutted with a kitchen, which is actually in the southeast of the plot. Along with it is a bar area or an entertainment space, the family den if you may. We decided to use natural Indian stone to create a herringbone pattern in the bar area. All sides of the bar have been sort of paneled with wooden batons. They're all made out of reclaimed wood that help in the acoustical balance of the space. Then the guest room is in this direction. The staircase is at the rear end of plot 1. So this is unit 1 and that is unit 2. So first floor of the house in general is more private. It has the bedrooms and a small living room that also overlooks the double height space. Because of the double height and the double light glazing, we opened the living room to more expansive views of the greens. Here you would see the sunlight flushing in, but that's also because of the elevation, which is a symphony of solids and void. Both the areas and the areas in the interiors are actually mirror images, but their treatment in the elevation is very different. For example, if you will look at this balcony, it has been treated like a solid block where a wooden paneling is flowing inwards here and framing the entire balcony. Whereas the same balcony in this has been given metal screens which are rotating such that it looks a lot more playful. The screens again are brought in front of this bedroom and a solid block is brought here in front of this bedroom such that it becomes very difficult to read from the front which unit is which. So as soon as you see the building from outside, you see the whole facade is layered with metal screens, the brick walls and the greens. So it's a series of layers that you see in the building elevation. The second floor is more of an entertainment space. The front is a common terrace garden. The terrace garden on one side has a gym that is shared between both the brothers. The other has an open-sky jacuzzi that's also shared between the two. So we used very earthy material. Mostly it was used of concrete textures in two tonality, light grey and dark grey concrete. Then there was also use of a lot of wood on the exterior elevation. The metal canopy is also at another layer. So you see a use of layered facade through the complete elevation of the building. So we used grit like finishes in the elevation in of course light and dark colors that emulate stone from a distance but it's actually grit. It keeps the moisture out of the building, helps frame the greens better and keeps the house cooler. As the greens were supposed to be the highlight, we wanted the color palette which is a fixed color palette to be extremely muted. So we incorporated wood, concrete finishes, very earthy tones like something like a sand color, white marble flooring, wooden flooring and Italian marble as a basic color palette of the home. The furniture whole of the home is very autumn and summer collection. So you see the tones of beige, the mango yellow, the oranges, the greens all coming together and reflecting and making the home look like one bigger landscape. Let's not forget that we are in North India. Here the summers are really harsh. The winters are very short. There are a lot of dust storms. So handling landscape becomes quite a task. So a lot of deciduous trees, tall trees have been used that don't use a lot of water. They save and preserve a lot of it in their roots. With Twin Villa, balance was my key takeaway. When the balance of private and public is right, when the balance of built and unbuilt is right, when the balance of solid and green is right, you always end up striking something that's more lively, that's more timeless.