The Good Earth
RAVEENA & KULVINDER
It’s the house straight from stories of the soil. This space in Chandigarh’s Sector-35 dwarfs every other, not so much with its magnitude as with the striking earthiness that lets off an aroma from every corner. Elaborate use of bricks, minimal cementing, extensive arches, paintings, immense scope for natural light and ventilation and to top it all, a wellmaintained garden, Kulvinder and Raveena’s house is definitely the textbook example of sustainable architecture at play. Sans any bling whatsoever, the home imparts a “sense of belonging and a spiritual connect” to Raveena, a painter. “I am forever looking forward to coming back, even when I am gone for a short while. I think this says a lot about what this space means to me. We have ensured that everything about this place is close to nature.
STRIKING FEATURES ❍ Nature is celebrated ❍ Well-lighted and ventilated ❍ Excellent sense of private space in each room The architects and interior designers—Siddhartha Wig and Anant Mann— have ascertained that the place is absolutely free from any glitter in the name of modern.” One look at the brick flooring and replica of nanakshahi bricks on the walls and you know what she is talking about. Kulvinder, a businessman adds, “The place has a peculiar energy. I am not really a spiritual person, but yes, given a chance, I would love to operate from home and not go to the office at all. Look around and you will notice that it’s ‘subtle ethnic’ and not ‘shouting ethnic’. A lot of emphasis has been given to practicality rather than mere beautification. We’ve tried our best to ensure that there is nothing in the house that doesn’t go with the theme,” Kulvinder, who runs Pugmarks, a web solutions company. The couple, who bought the house in 1999 adds, “Even before possessing this place, we had a very fair idea about what it should look like. Despite the pathetic condition it was in back then, we could easily foresee the metamorphosis it would undergo,” he says. With several doorframes brought from Rajasthan, Raveena attributes the personality of her house to the creative tastes of her designer daughter, Mallika Suri and herself. But she adds, “I must say that my husband and chef son, Manav, have a pretty well-developed taste too.”