A Home For Chanting, Living, Being Alone And Together

On a compact parcel of land in Ahmedabad, studio sangath carves out a pristine choreography of spaces that create moments of both discovery and solitude.

- Rajashree Balaram

The relationship between a built form and its inhabitants never stops growing over the years, says architect Khushnu Panthaki Hoof, as we discuss her latest work. When we work on any project, we constantly try to figure out what we can do to make sure that this relationship becomes enhanced with time. This ethos that guides Khushnu and her partner, German architect Sönke Hoof, at Studio Sangath, their multidisciplinary design practice in Ahmedabad, can only be accessed with a deep exploration of what constitutes joy and comfort for a person at an individual level and when he or she is part of that animated collective called family.

For their recent project at Sanand, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, the duo spent nearly all of 2017 distilling the expectations of a joint family of six that included the homeowners, their elderly parents, and their two children. They wanted a home that would offer spaces of solitude for each occupant and yet keep all of them connected to ach other, says Sönke. After a series of concepts were proposed, what emerged was the idea of a split-level design spread over three storeys: the basement and the ground and first floors. The split-level design breaks the monotony of the standard floor-stacked-on-floor format, says Khushnu. Each person in the family gets to have a private space of solitude, as well as many shared spaces for chance encounters. It's a reinterpretation of the traditional pol [or housing clusters] seen in the old quarters of Ahmedabad, typified by overhanging balconies and plinths below.