A 2,400 Sqft Light-Filled Bengaluru Home on a Challenging West-Facing Plot! (House Tour)

Whole movement transitions from one part of the house to another. The morning to how it ends at the terrace garden level. You experience light in its best possible dramatic way. When we explored this idea of light being very very explorative, that's when we thought we'll have to name this project Rhapsody of Light because it's a perfect play of light that we get to see here. Hi, I'm architect Milena Malatkar, Principal Architect at Vivo Space Architects Bangalore. Join me for an exclusive home tour of the residence Rhapsody of Light. To watch premium videos and access PDF eBooks, log on to buildify.com. We live in a city like Bangalore which is a very tight urban context. Having been located on a tight site size of 40 feet by 60 feet, we really had a very big challenge to work with. It so turns out that we had to have a solution where we bring in light in the best possible way. We also wanted to avoid direct light in the west part of the house. With this jali that we've created, it's made out of architectural concrete, deep colored dark brown hue that is curated for this facade. The afternoon when actually the sun is very harsh, it has this beautiful filtered light, beautiful patterns that is translated out of the jali. So the still floor starts off with parking, then we have a very beautifully designed staircase which is worked out with basalt stone, brings the user to the entrance of the house. We created a sense of entry in front of the main door, carefully oriented to face the courtyard when somebody enters into the house, they are opened out to that large double height courtyard. So the volume opens up from there. We always wanted to create this green sanctuary which they can also frequent. We've tried to keep this like a very carefully enveloped cocoon. Once the user enters into the foyer, they are flanked by living on one side, the other zones which are the private zones, the dining and the kitchen space. So the dining area, the living area, all these, they are really kind of overlooking green spaces and courtyards, add a huge value to how those spaces are experienced. So the user lands into first floor of this house, lands landing into family living space at this floor. The jali filters out the harsh west light, as well as the whole visual intrusion from the nearby context. So the family living actually has a cutout with a skylight on top, brings in ample amount of daylight. We try to connect people from family living to the further set of staircase that we divided. There are two sets of staircases that we have created. We try to bring in staircases to be a bit more differently designed. They are very strong anchors. So we bought in the idea of moving grid created with transitioning flutes, that kind of a very beautiful sense of dynamism to the transition spaces. Client actually approached us with this project. He just gave a brief of having four bedrooms. One was master bedroom, the other two bedrooms for his daughters. They get ideally filtered northeast light that they can receive in the morning. We bought in a very permeable layer of plants. You can see that there is a transition of straight line then moving into curves. This automatically created a sense of privacy from the neighboring buildings. We have created a lot of these steps where a lot of people can sit and chit chat. And further that continued and translated to another space which is the terrace garden. Every corner, every nook of this house is carefully crafted with pockets, so that everybody has something in store for them when they are using this house. We didn't want this project to get outdated over a period of a decade or two decades. We wanted it to be timeless. Sometimes it really kind of makes me feel surprised that we somehow expanded the volume, much more than 40-60 probably. That's the kind of experience that I get when I see so many people in this house.