The Garden House - Chandigarh, IN Status: Proposal

The Garden House is designed as a series of small outdoor spaces that interlace the interiors of the house. Generating a more intricate series of internal and external spaces. The house becomes an elaborate play between the walls that are constantly folding between public and private. The design focuses on using screens of different opacities to help curate the various degrees of privacy for the different spaces. The house is constantly unfolding itself creating a labyrinth between the inhabited rooms and nature.

Houses are mainly thought to be far too heterogeneous to constitute a singular type because of the diversity of societies, cultures and geographies. There is never a clear-cut boundary of what is public and what is private in a house. The exterior form of a house inevitably remains the same but the interior becomes a series of heterogeneous forms. The interiors are made up of reversible walls and its surface is like a membrane that constantly transitions between the interior of the house to the exterior landscape. When we explode one of these houses a multitude of devices that are specific to the owner comes to light. The house is used as a popular stage: the terrace, courtyard, window, gateway, staircase, and roof are at the same time a stage and a personal sanctuary. This leads to folding between different conditions: inside/outside, lit/dark, private/public, hidden/revealed.

We are interested in designing a house that is unconstrained by tradition but rather is activated by the symbiotic relationship that tradition and modernism have to offer each other. Our hope is to utilise the existing cultural conditions in India, with the personal desires of the Passi family to create a home that brings forth a design that acts as sanctuary for the Passi Family that can be passed on from generation to generation.