Name & Location: Aqua House, Anjuna, Goa.

Cost of Project (INR): Cost withheld with client’s request

Built-up area: 3300 sq ft
(In case of Public Building minimum built-up area should be 1000 sq meter)

Description of Project:

The House deals with contemporary urban nomadic living conditions and the overwhelming landscape of Goa. The processes are influenced by the predominant Portuguese house-form with its intriguing intricacies of lives beneath a single roof, and the location. The site forms a threshold: between the village and the beach and between social mooring and vagrancy — Anjuna being the cradle of the Hippy culture.

The key-word here is in-between-ness: of site — its physical and cultural position; of the principle participants — neither the architect nor the clients being resident Goans, but are frequent visitors and habitual travellers in their own right; and of the program — a home away from home, not complete yet adequate.

The uncomplicated plan is rationally nestled in the linear site with its short west-end facing the sea. All services — kitchen, bath and toilets, servant’s quarter and store — are accommodated in the low arms of single-storey massing along the east and north edges of the plot, so as to buffer the inner living spaces from the traffic outside — a parking lot on the east and the right of way along the north edge for the visitors to the beach. A tower — containing the overhead water tank, air conditioning compressors and other utility — anchors the north-east vertex. The movement into the house, through a large entry door adjacent to the tower, gradually spirals through a passage, into a small arrival court, then through a porch, into a large one-and-half volume living/dining space, then through one end of the kitchen bar, into the master bed-room, culminating into a small introvert courtyard. At the threshold between the dining and kitchen a flight of stairs branches up, above the master bedroom, to another sleeping space overlooking the living/dining space. The movement off-shoots from the west end of the living into a courtyard, and exits the site from the north-west corner — at the head of a small infinity pool — to meet the path going down to the beach.

Materials of Construction Details:

The building is constituted of a composite structure. While load-bearing laterite masonry envelopes the servant spaces, an RCC lintel slab with thick inverted beams runs all along the building’s edge. The slab floats on RCC columns punctuating the south side of the living space, affording a large opening to the west. The plinth is expressed as a distinct and coherent element by rendering its vertical and horizontal surfaces in an unbroken finish of IPs, daubed while curing with red-oxide soaked cloth. A sweeping Mangalore-tiled gable roof, with a dramatic structure constructed purely out of wood, forms one large mass encompassing the inner living spaces; its rafters are braced with plywood to avoid obtrusive ties that would otherwise run across the spaces below. The fenestration framed in aluminium renders further weightlessness to the building as the external layer of glass doors reflect the sky and the trees during day, and the inner layer of perforated plywood imparts a filtered glow at night.

Special Features:

In seeking a built form in trance, the earnest plan became intensely animated. The plinth is recessed to allow a substantial projection of the masonry surface above, imparting buoyancy to the structure. This discovery led to a severe reworking of the scheme, informing the distribution of volumes through the house and the necessary articulation and configuration of elements for the purpose. Adding to the intrigue of the massing is a glazed slit opening, a little below the slab, running full lengths of the two low opaque arms. The slit climbs down to mark a comma on the long north face, growing into an enticing louvered window. Evidently an act in wonder, the large roof does not sit directly on the mass below. Instead, it forms a silver through a glazed wooden girder running all around its perimeter, framing a spectacular panorama of the sea and the horizon from the intimate upper space.

This beach house is made up of myriad fragments — offering varied scales and textures, light and vistas, and spaces — and yet does not break away; its shifting base, torso and head, strive to express a leap of joy, aware of but unperturbed by gravity.