Excerpt: Enso Villa, designed by The Grid Architects, showcases a holistic design that creates a seamless flow between architecture, nature, and human life. Centered around a garden and water elements, the residence integrates light, shadow, and spatial rhythm to form a serene urban retreat. Using biophilic principles, it harmonizes interior and exterior spaces, fostering balance, togetherness, and a deep connection with nature.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] Ethos and Design Concept: Architecture meets Zen in an Urban city. The Enso project, named after the Zen symbol for circle, adopts a holistic architectural approach, integrating the building with nature’s rhythms. It aims for a living space in sync with natural elements, focusing on light, shadow, and spatial flow. The villa is designed based on plot size, sun trajectory, family needs, and climate, the architecture harmonizes plant life, water, sky, construction, and human interaction. The structure’s sections are interlocked, optimizing space functionality for a cohesive entity.
Biophilic urban living; give life back to the city. Green architectural and interior intervention re-establishing the urban axis, enriches urban space quality.
Architectural Planning–The Form: The plan centres around an Enso Garden, sit-out, and rockfall, with living spaces woven around, ensuring the home integrates seamlessly with the garden. This core element significantly influences the Architectural layout. Enso’s form emphasizes linear dynamics and precise spatial organization, featuring open courtyards and water elements, promoting a fluid transition between interior and exterior environments and enriching the connection with nature.
The layout, customized for the family’s preferences, creates a comforting, hospitable home within a compact plot by prioritizing green spaces. Key areas—vestibule, living room, dining, and kitchen—follow a rhythmic layout based on circulation requirements. Positioned on a square, corner plot at a gated community’s end, access is solely from the Northwest, setting the entrance there. Following vastu, the kitchen is placed Southeast, necessitating a thoughtful layout across opposite ends. The home’s Northern front façade maximizes its location and orientation.
Additionally, vertical transition spaces within the home, such as staircases and elevators, maintain a seamless connection to the environment throughout the villa. A skylight enhances the staircase area. The orchestration of large, glazed expanses, protected from the heat via the elevation boxes, instead of obtrusive walls is a conscious calibration to lend a sense of transparency, connectivity and inclusion. This architectural design thoughtfully balances solids and voids through courtyards and balconies. The facade prioritizes natural light and ventilation with recessed windows and terraces, employing climate-responsive strategies to combat the area’s intense heat.
Enso thrives at the heart of a central garden and waterscape, pivotal to the home’s design. Carefully selected plants and native species enhance biodiversity, creating a peaceful green retreat enhancing the project’s nature-centric ethos. Its design philosophy celebrates nature through landscaped areas and incorporating regional flora to support biodiversity and enhance resident health and happiness.
The Interior Narrative: A quiet retreat amidst the bustle of the city. Enso’s interior exudes refined elegance with OAK wood, natural fabrics, and curated artworks, and a spiritual prayer room for daily divinity, adhering to vastu principles. The ground floor entrance leads to an informal living room, linked by a common passage, including a guest room, formal living, dining, and kitchen, all spaces overlooking the verdant garden, illustrating meticulous material choice, detail-oriented design, and landscape integration as development keystones. There is abundant gentle natural light and connects deeply with nature, presenting a serene urban retreat fostering community spirit. The entrance features a grand, simple solid wood door, leading to spaces adorned with conscientiously curated and selected artwork and sculptures. The North-facing, double-height formal living and dining rooms bathe in soft sunlight, enhancing the ‘living in a garden’ concept with expansive views through floor-to-ceiling windows. Essentially all the living spaces overlook the garden. The ethereal prayer room is between the kitchen and living area. The home’s vertical connectors, like staircases and elevators, ensure continuous engagement with nature across levels.
The elegantly designed first-floor passage links two master bedrooms, a guest room, and a study cum library, gazing upon the double-height formal living room and garden through clear glass, enhancing vertical flow. Catering to privacy, the spacious & intimate bedrooms feature artistic & styled decor. Balconies extend offering shaded outside views, transforming this home into a unified design that upholds architectural integrity and connects with nature, promoting collective living.
Conclusion: Enso represents a thoughtful exploration of architectural form, materiality, and the indelible connection between humans and nature. It presents a model for eco-conscious, community-focused living. The development also shares several amenities like a home theatre and a gym in the basementIt’s an oasis where green architectural interventions breathe life back into the city, re-establishing an urban axis that enriches the space quality and home living. It’s where every corner tells a story of nature, a circle of togetherness, where every element converges to create not just a house, but a home.
Overall, Enso Villa epitomizes our design philosophy by establishing a connection to EARTH, SKY, Humans and Water. We specialize in taking in sunlight into the homes as we believe “Sunlight is the best friend of the Architect.” The design prioritizing habitat, preservation, balance and a deep connection with nature define the essence of an urban home.
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