Excerpt: Chandroday by Rajanikant Machhar + Nishant Machhar reinterprets a traditional courtyard house for a modern joint family in a rural setting. The residence balances privacy and openness, ensuring comfort and connection to the surrounding landscape. The use of local materials and climate-responsive design elements creates a home that blends tradition with modern living, offering both privacy and communal spaces in harmony with nature.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] ‘How does one live?’ The question we asked ourselves as the client approached us with a unique requirement of a residence for a joint family in a farm-land in a village. More so as this was to be designed and built in a non-urban context but with all the modern amenities and was to be a permanent residence.
Surrounded by farm lands this site is located half a kilometre off Vartej-Sidsar Highway, near Sidsar Village approximately 11 Kilometers from the city of Bhavnagar – Gujarat. Site land was acquired 27 years ago by the owner which was eventually developed into a mango orchard taking up most of the land, with a few patches where seasonal vegetables, legumes and few spices are cultivated. A rather oddly shaped farmland measuring 26,200 sq mts faces North and a strikingly large high grassy knoll right at the entry after a short driveway is a defining site feature as the rest of flat land gently slopes towards South contoured over the years for water runoff and harvesting. A patch of open land in the orchard was earmarked by the owner where he wanted the house to be built, almost at the centre of the site.
An immediate approach to designing a large home in the hot semi-arid Bhavnagar weather for a joint family of Rajputs where the traditional customs of privacy still impact day today lives would be to build an inward-looking courtyard house. We reinterpreted this idea of a central courtyard with a modern idiom which would be an exemplar of fusion between the tradition and modern values of architecture, lifestyle and at the same time keeping in mind realities of local climate.
The grassy knoll upon site entry is exploited and used as a roundabout as a driveway circumvents it and the road following its contours, rises first and then lowers itself ‘revealing’ the house. Following a hierarchy of public to semi-public to private spaces the built form is essentially an ensemble of parallel walls that respectively start from the vestibule at North opening into a formal living that has a generous west facing verandah followed by a family living connecting to North-East placed Pooja opposed by a sunken West facing verandah, followed by dining towards South. The Dining connects to Kitchen towards East, opens to a large verandah at South providing with an uninterrupted view of the orchard. A large quarter-turn folded plate staircase from Dining towards West connecting to a passage brings about the shift from semi-public to private spaces.
This passage leads to two bedrooms widening itself to 12 feet at their entry of those bedrooms forming a generous private sit-out overlooking the courtyard. This passage further leads towards West punctuates entry to a library and a Home heater. This stair vertically connects to three bedrooms via a lounge that opens to a terrace at North, to a bedroom above Kitchen at East and two bedrooms that repeat themselves over the ones at ground floor. All the bedrooms face South to exploit the prevailing southwest breeze aiding cross ventilation. Each bathroom also gets its own private sky garden / landscaped courtyard filling the whole volume with ample light bringing the landscape inside without compromising privacy.
A ‘Toe-Wall’ starts from the veranda of formal living and ends into the home theatre thus completing the courtyard. Also, a kund wraps itself around from the Pooja all the way to the entry of the vestibule and continues to envelope the verandah of formal living bringing about the element of water in the landscape.
The house employs a hybrid system of construction, that is load bearing walls built out of brick and locally available Shihor stone along with reinforced cement concrete structural members at regular intervals. Considering the soil type (black cotton being agricultural land) foundation has been done in random rubble masonry with lime mortar.
Considering a non-urban context, weather and scale of the built form, random rubble masonry of Shihor stone in finished pointing along with brick masonry finished in stucco has been used for construction, this stone has been used with the intention of imparting a sense of warmth and permanence to the built form, and brick breaks monotony of the stone work and fills in at nodes and junctions thus completing the built form. A hybrid system of truncated columns built simultaneously out of Shihor stone with RCC encased within support the deep overhangs and the truncation detail seemingly disconnects the weather shades and lightens the composition visually. Keeping in mind the weather conditions, railings have been crafted from Bansipahardpur stone, which don’t heat up in peak summers and still can be used to rest one’s hands or even sit.
Polished Ambaji white marble floor complemented by warm Jaisalmer stone, natural polished panelled teak wood doors – window and finely crafted solid wood furniture furnished in coordinated cotton tapestry impart a contemporary yet a very austere aesthetic to the interiors complementing the exterior building language.
Reinterpretation of a traditional courtyard house with a modernist ethos, keeping in mind the realities of contemporary lifestyles yet respecting the traditions of privacy is what makes this house so unique. The courtyard being a totem to the built ensemble, its manifests itself inside-out as well as outside-in. In spite of being a large residence, at no point does one feel disconnected, yet privacy is respected.
The way the enlivened spaces are oriented and generated using 15-inch-thick walls of composite masonry of stone and brick provide with much needed cross ventilation and thermal comfort respectively. All the fenestrations are judiciously worked out, the ones facing West and South are heavily shaded and / or deep set. This house is open when it needs to be providing with vistas and views of the surrounding orchard, making use of the surrounding landscape and the house a part of it, this openness is achieved with minimal glazing.
The House manifests itself inside out connecting to the generous expanse around and the spaces within, maintaining individual ambient character of every space, keeping in mind the realities of local climate, responding to the aspirations of the Client and above all belonging to a place.
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