Sabyasachi Routray

The site is a modest 3 bedroom apartment on the ground floor of approx. 25 year old building in North Bangalore. The clients were moving from a very spacious 3-bedroom rented apartment with balconies in to a comparatively smaller flat with no balconies. Their brief was to open up the house as much as possible and accomplish this in a very tight budget. Another aspect was they had frequent visitors and a thriving social life which meant the living, dining, kitchen and bar spaces needed to be all well connected and completely transparent. The previous state before the intervention was a typology of regular plan, intensely fragmented by partitions, which made the spaces look and feel cramped.

The design thus aimed at opening the living, dining and kitchen space and keeping them without any partitions. In the common area of the house, the only partition is a low height exposed brick ledge wall that divides the kitchen and the living. In most of the other cases, furniture is used as separators. The materiality is raw, stripped of all artifice. Exposed brick walls, white and grey quartz, white plastered walls and some colored tiles to add a splash of color. The existing flooring which is terrazzo has been retained and only polished. The bathroom flooring and dado is 1x1 matte white tiles with colored ceilings and matching color grout between the tiles.

Furniture has been finished in wooden laminates and polish, white powder coated metal and wired glass. Although the area is still the same, the spatial feeling has been completely transformed, from the small subdivided apartment into a large space. The materials and tones used make it look extremely simple, while rendering its appearance and functionality consistent with modern-day expectations. The simplicity of the space and materials is complemented by the presence of everyday items.