Excerpt: ‘Screen: The Lantern House,’ a residence by Zero Studio, features a facade that functions as a ‘screening’ device, separating the built from the unbuilt. The screen is designed to blend in with its surroundings, with a layer of landscape in the inner periphery filtering light and noise from the outside. This allows for a play of light inside during the day, while also allowing fresh, humid air to enter and spread throughout the house.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] This residence is set in a site that is covered in coconut plantations and other native vegetation belonging to a typical northern Kerala landscape: A very quiet and tranquil setting that doesn’t invite any kind of intrusions. Altering this and bringing about any kind of change called for a respectful approach.
Thus, this house is considered as an entity whose external facade is assigned the duty of ‘screening’ off the built from the unbuilt. This is done to place the volume in the most subtle way by not being in stark contrast with the context. This ‘screen’/ envelope of the house is lined with a layer of landscape in the inner periphery acting as a filtering member for the light and noise from the outside, also enabling a play of light inside during the day. Moreover, fresh and humid air from the surroundings is brought in, filtered and spread to different corners of the house.
The facade metaphorically represents a ‘lantern’ where the external envelope shields and glorifies the beauty of the inner core – the light or the function; literally being witnessed during the night.
Design follows a clean, straightforward elevation where windows and doors are wrapped inside without revealing their identity, producing a monolithic form. Once entering the house, the visitor is welcomed to a larger volume where all the common spaces are dynamically knit into one with an elongated water body by the entrance.
Walls are intentionally kept minimal to provide an unfettered access to the landscape in the periphery, while ensuring required privacy for bedrooms. While the screen and the subsequent landscape layer control the view towards the inner areas, the users are able to have a filtered view towards the outside through the same. This more or less thins the idea of having an opaque boundary to the volume, but serving its purpose of providing security going with an absolutely open planning. The palette for finishes in the interiors is mostly neutral to original shades without compromising this uncluttered appeal.
The user experience quotient: Designed for a family of four: husband, wife and their two kids who currently reside in the UK and come down during their annual holidays. They wanted their home to be set in their ancestral land, enabling them to be around their loved ones and hosting memorable gatherings while they are here.
The process behind delivering personalized and intimate spaces for each of the users from a common volume was very much intense and the design ultimately went about having some delights like the floating deck by the living area that opens out to the garden, reading space in the extended stair landing, private balcony of the first floor bedroom overlooking the plantation, the terrace planters, the bay windows and the prayer/ meditation room in the ground floor with perforated wall that brings in interesting patterns of daylight. These are spaces that emote varying moods where these users can celebrate the wholesome experience of ‘homecoming’.
Drawings & Sketches
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