SALVAGING THE PAST
The Collage House in Mumbai by architecture firm S+PS Architects takes eco-friendly ideas of recycling, reusing and rainwater harvesting to a whole new level.
Living in Mumbai, it is impossible to ignore the informal settlements in the city, and if looked at them closely, there are many lessons to be learnt in frugality, adaptability, multi-tasking, resourcefulness and ingenuity. The city has helped us develop a visua;l language and with this bungalow we have tried to apply some of these lessons without romanticising them. This home also looks at the idea of recycling and collage in several ways, from the very physical—like materials and energy to the intangible—like history, space and memories.
The front façade sets the tone for what lies within, with a “corner of windows” that reuses old windows and doors from houses demolished in the city. This becomes a major backdrop for the living room with an exposed concrete-faceted ceiling countered by polished white marble with intricate brass inlay on the floor. Metal pipe leftovers pieced together like bamboo form a “pipe wall” integrating structural columns, rainwater downtake pipes and a sculpture of spouts that is a delight for the senses.
In the central courtyard, on one side scrap rusted metal plates are riveted together, on the other, kitsch coloured tile samples retain a planter, and on the third side a wall is clad in waste stone slivers lifted off the back of stone cutting yards and also from the waste generated on site. Hundred-year-old columns from a dismantled house bring back memories, and nostalgia is nourished with a lightweight, steel and glass pavilion (with solar panels above) on the terrace level overlooking the hillside. This approach is reinforced again in the choice of materials and we play with a contrast between the old and new, the traditional and the contemporary, the rough and the finished. One finds use of recycled materials like old textile blocks, flooring out of old Burma teak rafters and purlins, colonial furniture, fabric waste, along with new ways of using traditional elements and materials like carved wooden mouldings, bevelled mirrors, and heritage cement tiles.
A language emerges that is both new but strangely familiar and makes us rethink notions of beauty that we take for granted. To make this mélange more “acceptable”, it is encased in a “garb of modernity”. This concrete frame—in a rough aggregate finish outside and a smooth form finish inside—wraps and connects all the spaces from back to front and across all three levels.
To build on top of a hill is always exciting, until we discovered that they were surrounded by neighbours on
all sides. This led us early on in the design process to look inwards and build around the quintessential Indian courtyard, albeit a slightly modified of it. This is actually raised a floor above ground level and hidden below is a large rainwater harvesting tank wrapped with rock that was removed from the hillside during excavation. It is the core around which this large four-generation family is organised and comes together.
Shilpa Gore-Shah and Pinkish Shah are Founding Partners and Design Principals of S+PS Architects which they founded in 1997. They lecture frequently in India and overseas. spsarch@gmail.com