Location: Ahmedabad

Completion date: November 2019

Plot area: 3600 sq ft.

Built up: 4260 sq ft.

Design firm: tHE gRID Architects

Designers: Snehal Suthar and Bhadri Suthar

The context was small 3600sq-ft plot in a typical middle-class Indian community. The intent was to create a visual statement that would hold its own ground and transform the plot’s shortcomings into design strengths. Moreover, while the space had to enjoy appreciable connections to the outside, privacy could not be sacrificed. The responses to these contrarian requirements were formalised as a simple, clean-lined structure, with a solid red textured facade, tempered with expanses of sandstone. The mandatory setbacks were tastefully greened and within this belt, the architects also positioned three sit-outs, sheltering under horizontal brise-soleil. The internal programme reduced passages and favoured a more open-plan typology. Elements such as walls, window frames, pergolas, balconies and openings at corners of dense concrete walls and large tree pots were choreographed into a layered sequence of diverse yet hierarchal spaces that offer varying levels of privacy. 

The Red Box House, as the project is called, is designed to satisfy an urban lifestyle that regards nature as a precious, inextricable part of living. It triumphs over limitations of site and context to deliver a habitat that reminds us of the power of new advances to change our built environment following the philosophy of Biophilic design. This project was driven by contrasts and contrarian requirements, a strive towards minimizing the shortcomings, using them to create positives. A programme that would be introverted and inclusive at once. Since the villa faced west the colour RED complemented the sunlight.