Aqua House | Girish Dariyav Karnawat, Architect

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Aqua House | Girish Dariyav Karnawat, Architect

Information

  • Completion year: 2008
  • Gross Built up Area: 2600 sq. ft
  • Project Location: Goa
  • Country: India
  • Lead Architects/Designer: Ar. Girish Dariyav Karnawat
  • Design Team: Mukthi Hegde
  • Clients: Kishan Kumar
  • Engineering: Predecon
  • Structural Consultants: Shekhar Bhagwat
  • Photo Credits: Ar. Piyush Rana, GDK Designs
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Excerpt: An uncomplicated linear site with a dramatic gable-roofed structure with timber rafters and a clutter-free floor plan is the essence of the Aqua House. The green of the house blends into the lush Goan landscape but also stands as a threshold between the busy fabric of Anjuna and the beach.

Project Description

Aqua House | GDK Designs
North facade © Ar. Piyush Rana

[Text as submitted by architect] Aqua house deals with contemporary urban nomadic living conditions and the overwhelming landscape of Goa. The processes are further 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 Hippy culture. The key-word here is in-between-ness: of the site – its physical and cultural position; of the principal participants – neither the architect nor the clients being residents but frequent visitors to Goa, and habitual travelers in their own right; and of the program – a home away from home, not complete yet adequate. Vacations and pilgrimages attend to the need for a break from the binding matrix of society. By moving away from familiarity, or enduring hardships, one exposes the body and mind to all elements and opens out to receive more. In essence, one seeks a state of trance to rearrange; and this state is, necessarily, impermanent; so, one may not break away but return replenished – to offer.

Aqua House | GDK Designs
Model 3 © GDK Designs
Aqua House | GDK Designs
Ground floor Plan © GDK Designs

The uncomplicated plan is rationally nestled in the linear site with its short west end facing the sea. The breakthrough, however, is in the language. Recessing the plinth to allow a substantial projection of the masonry surface above imparted buoyancy to the structure; and 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. All services – kitchen, bath and toilets, servant’s quarter, and store – are accommodated in the low arms of single-story masonry 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.

Aqua House | GDK Designs
Roof plan © GDK Designs
Aqua House | GDK Designs
View of the roof from loft © Ar. Piyush Rana
Aqua House | GDK Designs
Living / Dining © Ar. Piyush Rana

Adding to the intrigue of this opaque massing is a glazed slit opening, a little below the slab, running full lengths on both arms. The slit climbs down to mark a comma on the long north face, growing into an enticing louvered window. A tower – containing the overhead water tank, air conditioning compressors, and other utilities – anchors the northeast vertex. An RCC lintel slab with thick inverted beams runs all along the building’s edge. It floats on RCC columns punctuating the south side of the living space, affording a large opening to the west. The fenestration renders further weightlessness to the building by reflecting the sky and the trees during the day and imparting a filtered glow at night. 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 large roof does not sit directly on the mass. Instead, it forms a sliver through a glazed wooden girder running all around its perimeter. Thus, in seeking a built form in trance, the earnest plan became intensely animated – offering varied scales and textures, light and vistas, and spaces.

Aqua House | GDK Designs
Main entry © Ar. Piyush Rana
Aqua House | GDK Designs
Entrance verandah © Ar. Piyush Rana

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 bedroom, culminating into a little introvert courtyard. At the threshold between the dining and kitchen, a flight of stairs branches above the master bedroom to another sleeping space overlooking the living/ dining space. The slivers of the frames form a spectacular panorama of the sea and the horizon from this intimate space above. The movement branches out of the west end of the living into a courtyard and exits the site – at the head of a small infinity pool – from the northwest corner to meet the path going down to the beach.

Aqua House | GDK Designs
Ledge details of infinity pool © Ar. Piyush Rana
Aqua House | GDK Designs
OTS courtyard overlooking the beach © Ar. Piyush Rana

This beach house is made up of myriad fragments and does not break away; its shifting base, torso, and head, strive to express a leap of joy, aware of but unperturbed by gravity.

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