Casa Aum | A house with a fusion of Kutch and Moroccan architecture in Ahmedabad (Home Tour).

Hey everyone, today we would like to introduce you to Kasa Om, an Indian contemporary family house in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Designed by Mistry Architects, this is a story of a house that is a fusion of designs from Morocco and Kutch. Let me give you quick specs. Spread across a plot area of 3,600 square feet, the bungalow has a built-up area of 3,900 square feet. Designed for a family of four, a strategic play of solids and voids defines the spaces of the house. The house is a refreshing blend of nature, vibrant colors, highly adorned furniture and selectively picked furnishings and art pieces. If you want to know more about this project story, click on the link mentioned in the description below. It will take you to our website buildafire.com, where you can become a member and download full pdf ebook, including detailed floor plans, section elevation with dimensions and the material palette. You can download 250 plus pdf ebooks of the house's pan India. Till then, I hope you enjoy this video. This home in Ahmedabad brings alive the traditional spirit of Gujarat and Morocco. The strong characters of the existing surroundings, language of the land and the cultural background were critical driving points for our design intentions. Located on a dense residential locality on a 3,600 square feet of corner plot, being a corner plot gave us more advantages on setting the flow of the spaces right. Coming from a rich cultural traditional background, our clients wanted a home with a significant connect to the nature. Housing a family of four, they were clear in wanting an open and at private spaces. This made us design an open home blurring the boundaries between the internal and the external spaces, bringing in the nature and at taking care of the hot and dry climatic conditions. It was a simple composition of cubes of different dimensions, which was separated by voids. These volumes have created multiple spaces for us, which were used for leisure as well as functionality of the entire home. You enter through a large wooden door with wooden pergolas and a large main door welcomes you. Facing the north side, the staircase and the foyer acts as the main vertical connect as well as the main circulation spine for the entire house. It separates the formal and the informal spaces. We took advantage of it being in the northeast corner, so we'd left a lot of space on the north and east to be able to get the best amount of natural light. Living being private, opened out into the northwest where all this were complete courtyards. We didn't build anything on the living space because it had a larger volume. This particular height in this living room was mainly because of the chandelier that they had owned previously and it was ancestral and then also the Pichai artwork. Then the ground floor also houses another bedroom for the elderly at home. The dining opens out into an open puja court on the east side where we followed in the old traditional puja system where everything was under a tree with a backdrop of a wall which had the traditional hand-plastered walls with tikri work. Tikri work is basically a mirror work which is quite famous in Gujarat and Rajasthan areas. So the drama of the light in the mornings and the evenings were fantastic here with the mirror work reflecting and the way the wooden pergolas had the play of light and shadow or the shadows dance through the entire day in this area. So this entire space was basically landscaped which helped us in thermal comfort of course. On the first floor at the family area it was accessed through that and then there were two bedrooms which were one on the southeast and another one which was worked out at the northeast corner. Because we had larger windows and everything so we had huge overhangs which again acted as shading devices for us. The room on the terrace floor it was only a single room which they wanted to use as more their workshop or the den kind of an area. It opened into the east so the west wall was completely blocked so it opened out into a large kind of a terrace. It had its own little pantry and everything so it was self-sufficient by itself for a nightcap with your friends. Since the clients were collectors of art and pieces from day one so the way the entire plan was worked out was there was nothing that we tried to add like there was absolutely no false ceiling there was nothing that was worked out on a later date. So every art piece be it the Jumar, be it the Pichai art, be it anything was catered to initially in the design levels the niches for all their artwork the tiles that was incorporated into the toilet. Interior is basically about putting all of these together because the flooring and everything was planned earlier with the color schemes and thanks to Ashna for all the soft furnishing because she was an expert in textile design so she's worked out the best of colors and everything. Ashna is the daughter. The design theme of this home is a complete mix of elements of nature, vibrant color, highly adored furniture and art pieces. Each space is experienced differently be it through the seasons, be it through the different parts of the time. The blue-green flooring that we've used which is a tile which was locally sourced, the wood, the beige sand color textures into the entire wall which was completely hand plastered reminded us of the sand dunes of the desert. For Morocco and Gujarat had similar very similar kind of climate and everything so it was easy for us to work that out together. The local masons and the local craft people were used in the entire house for doing the cement finishes in the toilets or the hand plastered walls. We've given round edges which added on to the entire thing. For the door windows as well as the pergolas or the lowered window shutters that we had were all reclaimed wood from the old houses of Gujarat so we've reused them completely. We've used the basic solar water heaters, we've done rainwater re-harvesting. The way the site was oriented it was north-south kind of a situation. We had to catch in the wind in the best way because Ahmedabad being in the hot and dry area so hence the louvers were worked out at the lower and the higher areas where we had good amount of ventilation and of course glass in the center that worked out at the eye level to be able to catch the best of the viewpoints of the site per se. Even here we have to thank the local carpentry artisans who had worked on the older homes so hence you see the heavy artistry work that was done in jali work on the windows of the staircase or the staircase hand railing or the main door which was heavily carved so we picked up an old piece which we tried to work with the overall main door to be able to get that kind of look for the entire main door. The theme of the flooring in terms of colors and the usable spaces had more or less a little light kind of an area where because we had heavily embellished furniture so we had we wanted the furniture to be able to stand out or the art pieces to be able to stand out in that area. Then the staircase has a particular tile sourced locally that again brought in the kutch kind of influences on its rises. Then they had a lot of art pieces so we worked out separate niches in the entire house and lots of mirrors which were which they had collected over the years with different kinds of themes in we placed them in such vantage points that they kind of reflect the daylight as well as add another sense of space in during the evenings. For all the beds the arches were typically influenced from the moroccan theme. In the toilets also mostly it was a simpler kind of It was completely micro topping that we had done and which was easier to maintain on a later date. The landscape here played an important role. It being a corner site it already had some amount of planting on the north and the east side so we took advantage of that particular aspect. They were already well-grown trees. The clients themselves were very interested. They did do a lot of bonsai and everything so the whole overall living space or the terrace was used for their bonsai garden. Then the living court had huge planting I mean tall planting which screened them from the next door neighbor but it kind of opened out on the east side for the puja area with some amount of tall planting which kind of screens them from the road. Though initially the client wanted the moroccan kind of a home in Ahmedabad ultimately we were able to convince them that we had to get in the influences of the local flavor from Gujarat itself. They were open to the idea thanks to both Sujan and Aasthik for that. My greatest takeaway was the way they worked or the way the contractor or the craft people worked even during the COVID times even during the tough times how they were able to handle it and we were able to handle this particular house and that kind of time zone.