Fact File
Location: Karnataka
Size: 340 sq m
Principal Architects: Gaurav Roy Choudhury
Photography by: Niveditaa Gupta

Bellary House by Gaurav Roy Choudhury Architects is an adroitly composed residence that facilitates a convectional micro-climate (a response to the arid climate of the region) through a façade that is interspersed with small precast concrete windows and heavy eaves. An elevated garden in the northeast corner of the project is the defining element of this unique spatial plan, complemented by distinct interventions such as an open kitchen, private courtyards and skylights that create the fluid transparency associated with family living.

The Bellary House is located in the small town of Bellary known for its iron ore mines, boulder landscape, historic ruins, and its hot and dry climate.  It is, more specifically, situated in one of the town’s rapidly transforming neighbourhoods, which is currently seeing a lot of the older, modest houses give way to grander villas. The house is designed to stave off the outside heat and create cool currents within it so as to form a convectional microclimate. The outside walls wrap the house in this gesture of protection, pierced only with small and mass-produced precast concrete windows that dot this exterior. The windows are kept small with heavy eaves to keep away the harsh sun.

An elevated garden is set in the northeast corner as a generator of this microclimate. It is kept open to the sky in the shaded area to create currents that flow through the house, just like the light that reflects into it off its cool surfaces. This terrace garden is on a mezzanine level as it serves both the ground floor and the first floor with its generosity of spirit and soft textures. The family is a small family of four (a couple with two children), with the grandparents occupying a room on the ground floor for when they visit. The energy of the family and their generosity and simplicity is at the core of the house’s design intent. The resident becomes more “private” with every step one takes inward. The use of the volumes creates imaginary lines of division between public and private access, sometimes contradicting the sense of openness that the project evokes.