A 2700 Sq. Ft. Bengaluru Courtyard Home That Embraces Nature (House Tour)

The stone box actually emerges from the idea that two boxes intersect and one wraps around from the east to the south and the concrete wraps around from the east, north and west. So these two boxes intersecting, what about the name, the stone box? Hi, I'm Shravan Pradeep, a partner at NBX Studio. Hi, I'm Megha Nanaya, the other partner. Today we're discussing the stone box house in Bangalore. For detailed chapters and a PDF e-book, please visit buildofi.com. The link is in the description below. The plot was a 60 by 45 plot and 2700 square feet and the built-up area is about 3300 square feet. So the project is located in the south of Bangalore. It is in a plotted development adjoining Banagata Road. We had a little bit of an advantage in this sense because the clients are my parents. So I really know their lifestyle, I know their way of living, I know their likes, I know their love for pets. Their brief was that they want a space in the city but they wanted the interaction with nature for sure. This is an east-facing site. We have a very quiet, informal entry that has been created as an informal foyer. Then there is the formal porch or the foyer that happens here. That opens up into the main entrance which is the main internal foyer of the house. Now from the foyer, we break into the living quarters that happen in this zone here. So right now we are in the living room. This is probably one of those areas which completely open out. What you see here is a double light volume. You've got the road towards the east here which is also buffered with some plants that come in. The living on the other side opens to an open-to-sky courtyard. So the courtyard became the heart of the house not only because it's located centrally but also because every space at some level connects visually. On the ground floor, it is the dining and the living that connect physically to the courtyard. A flight of stairs ahead, we are arriving at the dining. So the dining and the kitchen, they become one couple. The dining also shares its space with a puja. It is cantilevered over a water body which we have inserted over a glass bridge. We've also managed to bring in one bathroom that fits in this zone along with a walk-in here. Entry into a common or rather a guest bedroom that fits in here. These steps that have been created form some sort of an informal amphitheater so that people can take their food and then carry out and use the court as a spillout space. So this is the staircase that takes us to the first floor. A small little powder room has been carved out into this zone. Another small little staircase has also been inserted into this. This is the service staircase. So moving on to the functions of the first floor, we have one master bedroom that has been crafted in this zone. The walk-in comes in to the northeast quadrant and the master bathroom that comes in. Because we started with these two blocks coming together, concrete could come in from the north and the stone would come in from the south. So the second master bedroom comes in this. As you can see, both these master bedrooms essentially connect to the court, also making connection to the outside. One of the key features in both the bathrooms are internal courtyards that have been inserted into the floor. So this is a space that both the bedrooms commonly share. We had designed these solid lures, wooden lures that make a connection to the courtyard. And when the television is in use, they actually pivot and close off completely. These solid wooden lures also have pivot windows actually, also have some perforations that allow for air circulation between the spaces when closed. You know, the detailing of this space is really kind of something that excited us a lot. One is the floor became a typical red oxide floor, which also was kind of nostalgic because this is what we saw growing up in all our grandparents' homes. And of course, what the brass strips did was that they divided the flooring into smaller bays and so it kind of helped with arresting cracks. The other element that we were trying to explore with was the jack arch ceiling. This was cast at site and the finish that you see is the exposed concrete finish and nothing has been touched. Only the highlights in wood have been added to kind of bring in the lights and kind of accommodate for that. So the internal staircase continues again, going on to the second floor. The outside has a black granite, that is the biggest component the house has. Otherwise, the stone that we have used are again two or three other variants of stone, which is jaisalmer that comes into the living room. We have Indian marble that comes into the other common areas. There was a lot of lime plaster because I think that was again one of their briefs. They didn't want it to be a very intensive home where they would think about painting every three, five years. So lime plaster became another natural choice. The flooring in the bedrooms are all of encaustic tiles, which are basically cement-based tiles. And we were lucky to have worked with cubit tiles where we actually got to customize the pattern. They were very helpful with that process. There was complete trust in the fact that, you know, I'll handle the balance of materials. And that completely played out to the way we had planned it originally. So that was a huge advantage in the sense that the balance of textures, the balance of materials, the balance of, you know, the in and the out and that threshold seems like it kind of really played out really well. So for me, really the experience of, you know, the volumes that we have created, the adaptability that we have given to a lot of the windows, to the doors, you know, where we have really explored with louvers, we explored with the sliding face, and we explored with a lot of those things. That adaptability is really something that, you know, I kind of thoroughly enjoyed working on.