One-of-a-kind spaces created by Busride for the 'Folly House’ stand on the identity cusp between gallery and home. Clean geometric patterns and highly multi-faceted furniture pieces dominate this residence's design scheme, totally uncaring of convention.
The Folly House is a product of an environment of self-aware ambiguity, a home capable of unravelling and adapting, and retreating and regrouping. This 4,500 sq. ft. home’s high philosophy translates to brilliantly-designed multi-functional furniture pieces that are entities within themselves, when alone. When considered in the company of other pieces, they recreate a more recognisable relationship found in every regular home.
The living room is composed of two large components, and that’s it! “We used to jokingly say to the clients that this is what you get when you hire designers from Bombay to design a house in Pune. Everything will be unnecessarily compacted and we won’t know what to do with the extra space,” the team recalls.
The artefacts here are the ‘living folly’ and the ‘study folly’. The former is a herringbone-patterned, metal-framed shiny behemoth of seeming abstraction that actually smartly brings together 6 different functionalities. Clearly for the children of the house are the horse-mount and the play slide segments, while the open terrace-facing horse-shoe seating and diwan seating parts offer ergonomic options for a more conventional drawing room experience. “The folly surface is constructed as a mesh of bent mild steel flats resting on stainless steel branch-like supports. The metal framework is then clad with flexi ply on the top and bottom and finally topped with 1/2”-3/4” thick teak wood planks set in a herringbone pattern,” explains the team.
A peep below this folly will reveal a secret universe of personal messages – a beautiful sprawling illustrated map depicting the family’s past, prospective, and aspirational travel destinations. The long sofa segment of the living folly stands perfectly poised to face the TV unit of the study folly, when its facing door is pulled open.
“The study folly consists of a slender steel armature around which the mobile elements of the slide and fold-out library, the slide-out study tables and the pivoting television unit are anchored. The entire volume of the cube is filled with cabinetry in its closed position and it can only be occupied once opened,” the team states. These spot-lit cabinets –further illuminated by a circular rig fitted into the geometry-loving false ceiling - hold curios, stationery items, and more, altogether looking like a magical little nook located off a dour market lane, waiting for a visitor to accidentally stumble in.
The kitchen-cum-dining zone is dominated by a long island fitted with mirror-faced cabinetry. The dining table here can swing about a pivot to cater to any kind of family or social occasion. A separate breakfast nook – sunken, well-lit and dotted with plants – is a stunning addition here.
The master bedroom features a concrete low-rise bed at the centre, with a copper backdrop coded with triangular storage pivots. The bathroom here is spacious and focused around a large sculptural square bathtub. Bright red bars of a Jungle Jim stand about in the children’s room.
The clients asked for a familiar 4-poster bed for the parents’ room, which the team again went on to subvert by creating a ‘floating’ bed – the structure is held up by a transparent cube on the floor – whose wooden posters stand with arms that open wide but stylishly refuse to touch. The guest room again is a lovely multi-purpose zone that can be pulled out and then put back up as part of the wall and display structure.
When commissioned, Mumbai-based firm, Join the Busride was explicitly asked to “make mistakes”. The design team, understandably, gleefully ran with this renegade idea to successfully create an outwardly austere marvel of a home with ace multi-tasking credentials.
