This Mohali Home has Connected Terraces on Every Floor (House Tour).

The idea was to explore interaction and sort of bring a world inside as we were not making a house which was completely outward looking. That oasis which we wanted to create inside was the whole crux of this project. Hi, I'm Harsh Indran. Hi, I'm Mohit. So we are going to take you around Cascading Terraces and for detailed chapters The project is located in Mohali. It's a row housing concept with back-to-back residential units. The plot is roughly around 40 feet cross 90 feet facing southwest direction. We were very lucky that one of us was the client because that closes the gap between the brief and the design itself. The site is originally 4 feet down from the road. By utilizing this recess which was already there we created a basement at this level and lifted the entire ground floor to 5 feet. So after crossing a screen which is a wooden screen which is retractable we enter into this foyer and then we take the main entrance door inside. So as we enter the space we realize that we are at a different level from the main floor. Just to make this journey from this level to another we've created this ramp and this completely changes the experience of taking this 2.5 feet high. Now this ramp is actually an introduction to your ground floor garden because till this point you are not aware that there is a garden in the ground floor also which is overlooking the basement. So ground floor courtyard is actually kind of a sunken slab with 1.5 feet of soil growing a champa tree. As soon as we enter into the main floor plate of the ground level the space sort of bifurcates into two directions. This side is more of a formal setting for us without any physical barrier. And this side on the right is more of the living space which extends into a private dining space and a kitchen area. As soon as we go into the more private areas we sort of pass through a small puja area which is right outside the master bedroom or the parents' room. So this is the staircase the vertical connect of the house. So this is where the landing converts into a sofa for the living room. Staircase is steps which are floating out of the brick wall. Very simple, very sleek. We wanted to retain the purity of the wall and let the wall be as visible as possible. We never wanted a lift. So if we have the ground first and second floor the person who is living on the second floor will have to take two flights of staircase to come onto the ground floor for even a basic function of using a kitchen. So now the idea was we keep the ground floor on the ground floor bring the second floor under the ground floor and create a basement. So because the plot was 4 feet down we automatically had the advantage of going down. As soon as one reaches this level the first thing you see is a window which is full height and a veranda space opening onto the courtyard. So now we are standing in the basement courtyard and this actually acts as a vertical connect which is not inside the house. We thought of bringing a vertical element which is a tree in this case which actually connects all the three floors together. Standing in this courtyard you are actually able to talk to the person who is standing on the ground floor and on the first floor and even onto the entrance veranda which is actually very near to this space. We have further three steps and then we enter into a zone which is a study in the basement level. This space is the main master bedroom in the basement and then there is a second bedroom at the back level. Again these two bedrooms get to have bigger windows they are opening into the veranda and get to have the direct view of the garden as well. And when we go into the basement you can see there is another bench in the living room with loose cushions again avoiding a lot of loose furniture so creating something which is more permanent more comfortable, more relaxed that extensively reduces the budget of the house. So when we talk about the first floor it's a living unit with two bedrooms one in the front, one at the back. There is a bridge it is done in metal it's not an RCC structure it's a very minimalistic idea. We wrapped the entire bridge in a wooden element which sort of connects us with the double height spaces on the level below. And when we talk about the back bedroom that is the master bedroom of the first floor we always wanted to create balconies which acts as a utility balcony also for us. So now the front balcony of that bedroom is a bigger terrace which is overlooking both the courtyards. Now how the name of this house came like Cascading Terraces is because all these three hierarchy of terraces are actually overlooked. And the front bedroom gets to have the front balcony which is visible in the front facade. So what we did we created actually two balconies. The second balcony is a hidden balcony which is actually behind that brick jali which is visible in the front facade. We very initially decided to go with very very simple set of materials. We wanted to explore the idea of using brick. The shuttering was done in a way that we could achieve a certain finish of the concrete. An important element throughout the house is a local Indian stone called Kota. And at places we've used chiselware. We knew how my family lives what kind of taste they have. So it is for them. You need to understand them and then do your designing around it.