Adaptive re-use in Interiors
The project that I am writing- the renovation
of the house of Mr. Suraj Caculo at Miramar
With the elder brother moving out into his newly
built villa, this house with built up area of 800 sq mts had grown along with
the family. Rooms had been added and sometimes carved out of other spaces. But
now with the inmates re-sized, the house had to shed its weight to provide cozy
dwelling to the younger brother and his family.
With just a few alterations in the basic
structure and a handful budget, we began remodeling the house. Just as in most
of our projects, we were daunted with the task of re-using the old furniture. More
often than not, we discard the old furniture to allow us “creative freedom”.
But here we were not allowed to do just that.
So we shifted most of the furniture to furnish
his second apartment, the place where our clients had to put up during the
course of the work. We also shifted the furniture in the old master bedroom into
the newly created kid’s room after re-polishing and a little re-doing. Not only
the bed, but also the entire wardrobe and the study table were shifted or
rather gifted to the kid’s.
The long verandah was used as a dumpyard and was eating into garden space. This verandah was among the first to be knocked down. With this demolition, and the subsequent opening of the enclosed terrace on the first floor, that once housed the master bedroom, the house opened its doors to the outdoors. It began to breathe. The treatment of the exteriors walls with random exposed laterite work gave a perfect backdrop to the garden and coupled with the pergola above lend a unique character to the greens.
The façade had crown shaped chajjas over the
windows, and the windows themselves were neither in any rhythm nor in geometry.
We decided to do away with the crowns leaving only the projecting piece,
introduced a MS fabricated continuous chajja on the flattened portion, finished
this with hilux board with textured paint finish and capped with mangalore
tiles on the top. This not only gave a linear look to the structure, but also
cut off the visual linkage between the windows on the ground and first floor.
At the entrance to the house we placed 2 antique
earthenware pots to create an interest as you enter. And at the far end, the
round shaped mirror held by embossed leaf patterns creates a focal axis coming
into the house. Next to this mirror is a statue of Buddha standing against the
background of wallpaper with pipal leaves. The Buddha finished in gold paint
and bead work compliments perfectly to the background setting.
The living room holds an invaluable Laxman Pai
painting on the far end. The unit around the painting is left untouched except
that a bar counter that was tugged on one side of the unit has been dismantled.
The living room with black leather sofa sets blends well into the scheme of
other existing elements like the custom made wrought iron chandelier and the
Italian marble flooring.
Earlier, the living room had bay windows which were used as seating spaces. Neither were they comfortable because of its depth nor could one place a decent sofa set in front of it. We thought of using this to our benefit rather than disbanding it completely. What evolved was amazing. We cut into the masonry and created seating over it. The balance masonry provided a rigid base to our sofa. This custom made on-site sofa was fitted into a shape that blended well with the shape of the bay window.
These bay windows not only were inconvenient from
inside, but also lent a cluttered look to the front facade of the house with AC
window units jutting out from the fortress like grills. We proposed an inclined
reflective glass face to create a simple and clutter-free, yet contemporary
look to the façade.
The dining room is very contemporary in design and couples up as an informal living room. An elegantly designed 10-seater dining table, a sly couch set, crockery unit & console units adorn the dining space. Lighting here is achieved by hanging up-lighters that lend an elevated feel to the décor. The dining set itself is a piece art done with Mother of Pearl inlays. The light fixtures, center table and crockery unit all compliment the table design.
The master bedroom is a fairly large area on
the first floor. This room is exclusively designed with a small lounge space
besides the bed. The wooden blade fans fixed onto a wooden beam projecting from
the false ceiling lends subtle character to the space. The bed itself has a
curvaceous shape that easily blends with the portal behind. This portal has
niches for artifacts and bedside lamps and bed side tables neatly merge into
the scheme of things.
In front of the bed, is a sleek TV unit and is designed to carry the same laminated burl veneer into the design. The pergola terrace is a perfect place for morning breakfast and evening sit out. The garden below along with its lawn and coconut trees allows the landscape to filter into this semi outdoor space. And it pains to imagine that this was enclosed once upon a time.
The master toilet has been modeled on spa theme
and done in browns and copper colours. The niches created allow placement of
artifacts and thereby break the monotony of the tiled walls. Bare wall above
the tiled surface has been painted to compliment the fine self print of the
tiles.
Being in the business of car dealerships, the
clients had a wealth of spare parts of cars stored as junk for over 50 years,
and they wished to craft furniture with it for this room. And all these had to
be placed on the existing Italian marble floor. Suraj sent me images of the junk
but they were all greek to us. We went to the store and handpicked the ones
that we felt could be modeled into furniture.
As the junk began to take shape adorning metallic colours, they began to compliment very well with the Italian marble and ceased to look out of place, and eventually this turned out to the best room in the whole of the house with a complete different theme and a different setting. This room is the most frequented part - What with it housing the bar, the music and karaoke, and the pool table. Now called by friends as auto pub, this in-house pub has made many a private pubs loose their business.
The only portion of the floor without the
Italian marble was the area which previously housed the dresser. This ceramic
tiled floor was covered with aluminium chequered plate and a pool table placed on
top of it. The floor demarcated the game zone from the entertainment zone. An
aquarium and an antique 1950s model Triumph-TWN motorcycle provided the desired
enclosure.
The room was too large to be cozy, and we had
to darken the space by painting walls and ceiling in dark shades and using just
adequate light to tone down the enormity of this large space. The silver
strokes added the much required dash of adrenaline and created a very vibrant
and dashing space.
A loader arm for front bucket of JCB 3D was used to prepare the bar counter. 2 of such loader arms were placed sideways adjoining a free standing column in the room. The bottom arm was covered with wheel rims cut to shape and to provide for foot rest. With a glass top, the resultant effect was that of a cantilevered bar counter. Now these loader arms were not lifting buckets, but uplifting the spirits of whoever close to it.
We had a lot of exhaust pipes of different
shapes and sizes. We bundled them together and created a screen on the wall.
This screen was placed behind the bar counter as the backdrop interspersed with
glass shelves to hold liquor bottles. We hit upon a metallic colour scheme to
blend with the Italian marble floor. Shelves were fixed to the wall with the
help of brackets and pistons. The free-standing column was also covered with
exhaust pipes recreating a tree-form that moved along the ceiling forming
branches and hovering upon the whole room.
Axle housing and spoke wheel rims were used to
fabricate bar stools. A spoke wheel rim was used as a base on which an axle
housing was fitted to attain height. The seat was derived from two wheel rims,
cut after welding to achieve the shape of backrest. The seat was fixed with a
bearing for rotational movement.
Additional seating was created out of wheel
rims of varying sizes fitted one above the other and topped with plywood
carrying the round cushion seats. This seating was placed in the corner
adjoining the aquarium and it provided for a diwan type seating interspersed
with cushions of different sizes and colours.
Chairs were crafted with 3 wheel rims welded
one atop the other and fixed with suspension lower arm to act as backrest. A
coil spring insert cup was used for housing the cushion. A fly wheel ring was
welded to a cut wheel rim for housing a coil spring which held an inverted
shock absorber within to lend a spring effect to a bouncy stool that we created.
A six cylinder crank shaft has a very
interesting design. This zig zag, very asymmetrical shaft was used into creating
a stand-alone center table. This shaft was welded to a wheel rim base and a
wheel fixed to the shaft top with a bearing for the rotating glass top. Even
ashtrays were crafted from pistons sliced into half in line with the piston
slot.
Leaf springs have very nice curved shapes and
we decided to use them to fabricate our furniture. We created one center table
with inverted leaf springs in cross pattern for the base and holding the glass.
Some of these leaf springs easily blended into the shape of an easy chair. These
were fitted with suitable seat cover and
located on the deck outside the recreation room.
Another of the loader arm was submerged into
the ground to create a low bench for casual seating on the deck. We inverted air
filter casings and provided it with a light bulb inside to form light fixtures,
just like the bollards in the garden. We didn’t stop at that. We even
introduced car headlights as lighting elements into the garden.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this
project gave us an opportunity to experiment with materials we had never
imagined to use, and re-use furniture and structural elements like never used
before on this scale of works. What would have otherwise been constituted as
nuisance and a potential health hazard was re-used to create furniture of the
highest degree. Such practices will definitely go a long way in helping the
environment and sow the seeds for a green initiative in interiors.
This is our way of lending a hand to this green
initiative. A new definition to Green has been rendered and a new path created
in this direction. Re-using junk has equal importance as solar and wind
energies and with the depletion of natural resources, junk will have to be
looked upon as a huge resource in times to come.
We would like to thank our clients Suraj &
Shefali Caculo for believing in us. And especially to Suraj whose knowledge on
spare parts and ideas on fabrication helped us recreate the magic in the
recreation room. My associate architect Rupesh Shetye who worked on this
project needs special mention.
Architect Siddha D Sardessai
Panaji Goa
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