This home sure is a moving experience
Marble walls open and close to cool and heat Indian home housing multiple generations
The walls of the aptly named Moving Landscapes open and close as if by magic. They help block intense heat and sun in the daytime and allow cool evening breezes to waft through.
The walls — secondary enclosures that can be called into service when needed and sent away when not — are welcome protection from natural elements in the stunning home on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India.
Moving Landscapes is home to several generations, a previously popular mode of living in the country, but now increasingly shunned as single-family units gain popularity. One of the city’s most prolific real estate developers, his wife, as well as his two sons’ families all live there. The size and the layout of the home provide enough living space to keep them all happy.
The grounds are shared with the dwellings of the homeowner’s two other brothers, who also live with their families.
One of the challenges in designing the home had been the creation of great communal spaces for family get-togethers while providing private living spaces at the same time. The main ground floor houses kitchen, dining, family and formal areas with a wing at each end, one containing the master bedroom, the other several guest bedrooms. On the first floor, the main area houses a gym, lounge and home theatre, again with a wing on each side containing the bedrooms for the owners’ sons and grandchildren.
The spectacular walls that open and close are made of a marble called Bidasar Forest — a polished surface that delivers a direct juxtaposition to the arid, dusty conditions of Ahmedabad. As well, the stone walls act as an outer shell to the home: the actual walls are glass. The site of the home measures nearly 55,000 square feet; the residence’s floor area is more than 15,000 square feet. Materials used in the house include glass, steel, Bidasar Forest stone and exposed reinforced cement concrete.
The home took 18 months to build and was completed in 2012.
Gurjit Singh Matharoo, of the architectural firm Matharoo Associates, answers questions about Moving Landscapes: How do the walls open and close?
The stone walls are supported by custom-designed motorized pivots and giant sliding systems. Architecturally and structurally, this entire layer is kept completely detached from the inside structure, almost as a heat buffer, and is only supported on hidden structures within the sliding and pivoting systems, making for the awe in having thick concrete slabs floating high on moving stones. How difficult was that to construct?
Though almost magic-like to the casual onlooker, to an avid mechanical enthusiast it’s a simple system of wheels running on motorized gear within a steel skeleton, which becomes the frame for hanging dry cladding of Bidasar stone. While we architects made the design and shop drawings, the fabricators did the steel frames and the stone agency did the rest. What is the weather like there and how does the house accommodate that?
The plan of the house is interpreted as a linear pavilion, ensuring every space in the house is lined with glass on the facing sides — it’s the first enclosure. The second enclosure is a layer of massive 15-feet high, nine-feet wide and one-foot, six-inch thick Bidasar stone walls along the entire perimeter — an impregnable shell.
This layer of stone panels help create a buffer between the inside and the outside, protecting the inner layer shell of concrete and glass from intense sunlight and 45 C heat, thereby reducing first the area to be air-conditioned. What are the sustainable features?
Besides the heat reduction, the house is a simple optimal construction in fair finish concrete. Our study showed that while performing a reasonable function, the embodied energy of concrete is actually only 1/15 of that of stone while being almost as inert and long lasting.
Likewise, in order to provide the same structural strength, earthen materials must occupy as much as nine times the space of concrete. To our great surprise, concrete and steel fare hugely better than earth, brick and stone. What were the biggest challenges in building the house?
The age-old tradition of joint family living has disintegrated into small nuclear families. Despite this change of cultural attitude in the present Indian context, a large number of families, bound by family business and obliged by traditional ingrained values, still choose to live together.
While this allows them to benefit from shared responsibility across generations, it often leads to the creation of autonomous suites within a house that isolates families even under the same roof. The challenge lies in providing opportunities for communal collision, while providing privacy.