One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier

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One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier

Information

  • Completion year: 2022
  • Gross Built up Area: 7,200 sq.ft.
  • Project Location: Hosur, Tamil Nadu
  • Country: India
  • Lead Architects/Designer: Samira Rathod
  • Design Team: Project Architect: Hetu Jariwala / Sunain Dalwani, Manjit Patil, Madhura Jamsandekar, Nikhil Periaswamy
  • Structural Consultants: B L Manjunath (Manjunath and Company
  • Contractors: Sri Neralu Constructions, Karnataka
  • Photo Credits: Niveditaa Gupta
  • Others: PMC: UKB Project Management
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Excerpt: One Tree Hill by Samira Rathod Design Atelier is an architecture project imagined as a timeless monument serving as an identity for the village and its inhabitants. The design of the building is based on narratives of the social, nostalgia, materials, and of the natural surroundings for the users to celebrate and enjoy while inhabiting the building. For celebration, for gathering, and for ritual, the program of the building is almost left to the village to decide.

Project Description

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

[Text as submitted by architect] SRDA began work to build a community centre in Byrasandra, Hosur in 2015. It was for a patron who lovingly wished to dedicate a building to his land and people. The building is imagined as a monument that would last for many years as a living memory of the relationship of a man to his land, of nostalgia, and give an identity to the people it’s built for. This community hall now rests amidst the beautiful landscape of Hosur in the memory of its patron, MR. HRS Rao.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
Site Plan © Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The village is about two hours from Bangalore airport. One just forgets everything on the way to this village because of the picturesque landscapes that flank either side of the road that leads to it. The entire belt lies on a granite bed, and hence there is granite everywhere. On the way to the site there are many granite quarries. Impressions and the textures of the rock were the first few visuals that gave rise to design ideas. The way to the site is through the town of Hosur, into the small hamlet of Byrasandra. The village has century old adobe houses, wells and warm people.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
Site with contours © Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The site was a small hill, with large granite boulders and a humongous species of Banyan almost like a crown on the head of a robust monarch. The hill had breath-taking views of fields and a lake until one’s vision could reach. The client wanted it to be a monument, a powerful symbol for the village and have a sense of timelessness. The rock and the tree were preserved by the designers through the entire project and even after.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

Byrasandra is a small lake touching village with a few settlements and a population that thrives on the fields that surround it. On the periphery of this village is a small shrine under an archway created by two drooping banyan trees. This is an important shrine for the villagers for prayer and marriages in the community. This shrine is in an axis with the site for the project, a nuance the designers discovered after having started work.

The community hall designed, is now the new space for these community marriages to occur. Such narratives not only informed the architecture but also layered it with a lot more meaning. These narratives of the social, of nostalgia, of material, of the rock and the tree have been very subtly built into the design for the users to celebrate and enjoy while inhabiting the building.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
Floor Plan © Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The plan of the building resembles that of traditional temple architecture in India. There is a hall in the centre and an area for circumambulation around. In the case of the building, this outdoor area is meant for a variety of community activities once the people appropriate the building. For celebration, for gathering, for ritual, the program of the building is almost left to the village to decide.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The form of the building is very brutal with many of its walls in thick stone and no openings. There are dead stonewalls that just appreciate the beauty of this material, granite. While along with that, the main hall is designed in such a way that it feels lighter, it feels more open as if the stone floats above. The sagging ceiling of the main hall and the thin steel fins holding it are like the bows of a tree, delicately held by branches, but shade giving. The curving of the staircase, the tight space within such that one’s arms frisk over the texture of the cold granite, eventually opening up to the terrace that gives fantastic vistas of the landscape and lake around are all architectural moves very carefully designed in the building.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The fields and the different blooming flowers peppered across in this landscape have been imbibed into the building as patterns for flooring. Different coloured stone chips inlaid in cement floors resemble the fields around as if they walked into the hall. The ceiling is done in broken tiles and glistens with a beam of light falling over it just like the lake glistening on a summer afternoon. The ceiling brightens the space of the hall within.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The tree logs that hold the roof in place so delicately are old dead eucalyptus logs found in the vicinity. The patterns on the logs were formed by eating of the termites, that were pieces of art that nature had made, almost like mementos.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The skylights are small dots, apertures in the ceiling that allow thin beams of light into the hall at various times of the day. One really notices light spots at different positions at different times, almost like a pleasure giving game of hide and seek, appearing and disappearing. Layers like these have really made the architecture richer and the experience more sensual than just the plain function for which architecture is usually made for.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The community hall is sustainable as well. The entire building has been made out of local granite sourced from quarries around the site. Old temple sections have been studied to realise the core being made in bricks and thick 3-4” stone cladded over it. This technique has also been used in this building to avoid making the building really heavy as opposed to all stone construction.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

Each and every piece of stone in the building is hand cut, hand chiselled and shaped in the desired form. The stone is also hand dressed to reveal various textural qualities of it and in some places dented to make patterns in the stone. The stone is then almost woven, strung together with metal rods within such that it stays on for much longer and doesn’t fall apart. The entire stone work has been done by a team of local Muslim craftsmen who are from within the region.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
Elevation © Samira Rathod Design Atelier
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The footprint of the building is rather small and great attention has been paid to details within the building. Joineries of stone, fragility of the metal braces, thick metal railings, the stone pitching have all been meticulously designed. The walls in the building have been covered in mud plasters made from material found on site, much like the adobe houses in the village. Hence a sense of local craftsmanship and many local materials and techniques render a unique semantic to the building.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

The client always envisioned this building to be for the community he belonged to. For this to become the identity of the village and for its people to take pride in it. The building is to be a witness to many generations of people coming together. In some sense it is almost magical how the building starts to appear as a silhouette in the background from a kilometre away as one approaches the site. It has already become a visual marker in the otherwise horizontal landscape of the fields and water.

One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta
One Tree Hill | Samira Rathod Design Atelier
© Niveditaa Gupta

It can be noticed that in fabrics like this one the space of gatherings are usually cross road chowks, religious places or verandahs, however Byrasandra now has a building which is made for its people, by its people. This gives them an immense sense of ownership for what they can call their own. The designers have made efforts to give to the community a building that they are proud of and enjoy. The building awaits to be taken over by its people and the nature around it.

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