Form-based Architecture

By Anuradha K R

Photography: Courtesy Ar. Mahesh Naik

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“White Triangle Farmhouse in Panvel, Maharashtra is something akin to Frank Lloyd Wright’s hexagon grid houses”, says its architect, Mahesh Naik. Set amidst a picturesque landscape, surprisingly within city limits, it presents an elegant architectural vocabulary, dominated by equilateral triangles.

Sloping roofs, descending from different levels make their presence felt, at the outset, sheltering open verandas and a petite pool. The fact that the entire house is placed on a meticulously designed ‘pedestal’ makes one instantly sit up and take note of its design quotient.

 

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The living room, presenting itself as a metaphor to linearity, serves to segregate the house judiciously in terms of public and private spaces. The western end accommodates a ground-plus-one structure 4-bedroom block with the stairs running right at the centre and the eastern end accommodates the kitchen, dining & TV spaces etc.

 

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The alternate, repetitive corbelled brick pier and glazing in the living room makes the house more permeable to lush green outdoors with one of the two bedrooms on the lower level opening into the pool; while the other one faces the foothill of a mountain. Southwest breeze over the pool helps to keep the house cool.

 

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Black basalt stones for foundation, Mangalore clay bricks for walls and Yellow Jaisalmer stone for the flooring have gone into the making of this 7000 sq. ft. house (including the open veranda and pool area), built on a 2 acre farmland. The Mangalore tiled roof of the house rests on M.S. Steel roof-frame. Multiformity of the white china mosaic tile work on walls of the kitchen and bath provide a striking contrast to the uniformity of the exposed brick walls. Aluminium sliding doors and windows and M.S. Steel hollow-box section railings make up the metallic components of the spectrum.

 

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Triangular shelters, restrooms and skylights, triangular forms in parapet design…and the theme continues to stamp its impression all the way...