The Selfless House in Kerala, designed by LIJO.RENY.architects, reiterates the idea of a green home by focusing on local materials and a simple look.
Designed by Thrissur-based LIJO.RENY.architects for an elderly couple, ‘The Selfless House’ in the village of Thevakkalin, Kerala, marked a renewal of perspective for both the parties involved. “Our past projects were more about well decorated spaces. So this was a departure in approach for us,” says Lijo Jos, who co-designed the house with Reny Lijo.
The home exists within the family compound, so a lot of snippets of suggestions were blended together to form the blueprint of the house as it stands today. The need was to have very contemporary-looking, chic, yet comfortable abode. It had to be well-ventilated of course, and not require much time and energy towards its maintenance. And it had to be a single-level building.
The architects imagined interconnectedness of spaces, so that one’s line of vision wasn’t restricted to one room and therefore, the dining area sort of opens up into the kitchen. They made sure that movement is hindrance-free throughout the interior space. The duo also presumed the coming in of much used old furniture, and ensured that there was enough area available to accommodate it.
Reny and Lijo also relied on a more traditional understanding of building ‘green’, instead of taking off on a conventional template and allowing the budget to balloon out of control. They even took solar panelling out from the scheme when it started to overstep budgets. “We wanted to design a project that required less or no electricity at all (for lighting and ventilation) during the daytime; hence saving a lot of energy. Upon intense calculations, solar power turned out to be financially unviable and hence we had to resort to ideas like tall rooms and courtyards and vents at strategic positions,” they share. “All buildings built a long time ago were actually ‘green’. It was not about ‘rating’ then, but about the honesty of how you build and with what you build.”
Rough-finished Kota therefore adorns the sit-out. The use of Kota was preferred as it is cheap and ages gracefully. A mix of yellow oxide cement and polished Kota makes up the flooring in the interiors.
The toilet walls sport a lighter shade of green oxide cement and break up the monotony of stone all over. The ceiling is made out of poured, exposed concrete, patterned with sleeper wood shuttering. Stout mullions (made of G.I. pipes) feature in the bedroom courtyards, while the front yard has been left largely untouched.
Inspite of the breezy arrangement of the rooms, the sense of privacy of the two bedrooms is not compromised. The living and dining rooms, and the kitchen and the foyer, however, hold hands to form a sinewy link of spaces where you hardly lose sight of the other person in the house.
The whiteness of the façade walls is broken up by exposed Latrite sections smeared with a paste composed of powdered Latrite stone and cement. This sort of accenting exists even in the interiors.
The sit-out references the traditional Malayali thinna. Sun roofs throw down natural spotlights in many places; the shaded portions are used for multiple purposes inside the home. A sunroof made up of PVC pipes of 100 mm diameter, flushes the puja room with ethereal light.
The 158 sq. mt. of floor space looks sprawling because of the angling, and a smart play with natural light. “With The Selfless House, we got to see a project from a different perspective. It helped change our view totally on building spaces,” says Lijo Jos.
