Located in a western suburb of New Delhi, this house is a home for a couple who are both doctors, as well as his aged parents. The site is a rectangular plot of 400 sq.yds, with a long south-facing side and a short west-facing side fronting access roads, while the north side is a party wall and the east side fronts a service lane.
The design was evolved around a central courtyard into which the major openings focus. The courtyard is screened from the street outside by a timber frame inset partly with louvers. The frame extends over all the external walls with the louvers set at different angles to provide visual privacy, to allow the winter sun to penetrate into the courtyard, and to protect the windows from the monsoon rains.
The interior planning allows the house to function as two discrete but connected sections – an open plan series of spaces on 2 levels for the doctor and his wife, and a more conventional series of bedrooms around lounges for the parents and live-in guests. At first floor level the courtyard is bridged across the south side by a gallery which connects the two sections and shades the courtyard in summer.
The main building materials are brick and timber, with roof/intermediate floors of reinforced concrete, and flooring of stone.
This image is embedded in ...
- Between the Earth and the Sky - an Architectural Journey In Portfolio of Works, MN Ashish Ganju. London, 1998.