Remembering a gorgeous Goan day spent at Nivim, our first project, with the sunlight filtered through trees, the chirping of birds, cool blue water of the pool and moonlight and stars at night...

Rass hotel is a boutique hotel located in the heart of the historic center of Jodhpur in Rajasthan. The new hotel is built within three existing heritage buildings that have been carefully restored. The real beauty of the place is to be found in the 3 new buildings have been added to the complex. The new addition has been done with such finesse that if one looks at the photos, it is hard to see where old ends and the new begins. The planning of the new complex is a great example of adaptive reuse and historic preservation. The new buildings are carefully sited and sized such that they become a part of the historic buildings and landscape. 

Existing Site plan with three original heritage buildings.

New site plan for Raas hotel with new buildings added into heritage compound.

In order to blend the old with the new, the designers have used local red sandstone as the dominant exterior material. The real nuance in design lies in the manipulation of the material into screens that evoke the traditional 'jaali' but are fiercely contemporary in pattern and the way they fold out of the way to enhance transparency, frame views and create indoor-outdoor spaces. 

We love everything about this space and architecture, and want more of the same !

Designed by Lotus Praxis Initiative. Watch architect Ambrish Arora’s presentation on the design for Raas.

Link to Raas Hotel Website.

Raas Hotel won the award for Best Holiday Building at the World Architecture Festival 2011.

Most images courtesy of Designboom.

Amangiri, 'peaceful mountain' is located in Canyon Point in Southern Utah in the United States. The resort is surrounded by a dramatically surreal landscape of a desert. We love and drool over the minimal architecture in the monochrome palette with straight clean lines that frame the rugged and barren surrounding landscape.

We love the strength and confidence in design where embellishments are unnecessary and the landscape is at the center stage. We are in awe with the drama where the building is unapologetically modern in style but fits right into the landscape, where the building and landscape take turns in being the object and backdrop, the view and the frame.

Images courtesy of Amanresorts.

Utsav House in Maharashtra in India is yet another beauty from Studio Mumbai led by the very talented Bijoy Jain.

It is actually one of my favorite Bijoy Jain creations. I love the scale of the house, the bare walls against the expert wood carpentry and brass hardware. I love the way the walls continue to become the floor finish. There is a quiet and subtle beauty in the thought and precision in execution that elevates this building above the usual and prolific construction that we have become accustomed to. Kudos to him once again ...

All Images courtesy of Archdaily.

Elsewhere is a gorgeous down-to-earth resort in Goa with history that dates back to 1886. It is a located on a thin stretch of land adjoining the Arabian Sea. Defining true barefoot luxury, this is the resort Brad and Angelina have rumored to call home during their visit to Goa.

Elsewhere has 4 old houses on the beach that have been lovingly restored and the result appears breathtaking. Retaining the names of their historical use, they are referred to as the Captain's House, the Piggery, the Bakery and the Priest's House.

We love the simplicity of the architecture and the renovations. We love how the houses are simply a medium for users to experience the surrounding landscape which has been left largely untouched. We can imagine some beautiful breezy mornings and starlit nights in these homes.

The Captain's House

The Priest's House

All images are used with full permission, courtesy of the Elsewhere website.

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GOPIXPIC

Herzog & de Mueron is a Swiss contemporary architecture firm, one of the best in the world according to me. They have been hired to design the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art which is a very exciting prospect for all of us design lovers in India. I heard them speak some time back and one project in particular caught my attention and imagination.

It is one of their lesser known works, the Dominus Winery Estate in Sonoma, California. I love the contemporary design aesthetic, the simple building form, use of natural material, the play of light in the interiors and the building’s ability to blend into the surrounding landscape.

I specially love the elegance of clean straight lines and linear geometry that reveals textures and fine details when inspected up close.

All images via Dominus Estate (First image via Travelmodus).

Here is a video of what it feels like to spend a day at Nivim as the light changes from morning to evening.

Goa TL Full Compressed 03 from Anjali Mangalgiri on Vimeo.

In simple words any new construction specially on a greenfield site (where there were no buildings before) has a negative impact on the environment (scroll down for why?). But the reality is that we need buildings and implementing green building practices help us in reducing the impact of the building activity on the environment.

How does building activity impact the environment:

• Buildings consume large amounts of material and energy during construction and generate waste

• Buildings continue to consume energy, water and other resources during their lifetime along with continualy generating waste (domestic waste, solid waste and water waste)

• A building on a previously vacant greenfield site changes the land and its relationship to the surrounding environment:

  • buildings change the natural landscape of the site by reducing existing vegetation, changing natural topography, and water flow patterns

  • buildings create concrete barriers to absorbtion of water back into the earth thus increasing storm water runoff (leading to flooding of low-lying areas and additional burden on existing infrastructure) and fall in underground water table (due to reduced recharge)

  • Loss of natural landscape also results in the loss of habitat for animal and bird life

  • Materials used in a building have a direct correlation to the health of its residents

Most of the above reasons are fairly well understood in the building community then what are some of the reasons that green building practices are relatively inaccessible to the everyday builder? even when they are driven by common sense and reflected in many traditional construction practices. We have found that:

• There is increasingly a lot of superficial jargon surrounding green buildings that needs to be shed

• It may be easier to start from our backyard rather then wait for top-down government led infrastructure development and policy formulation

• There are available green certification processes than can offer a system of checks and balances but sadly the industry is disillusioned about them or find them too tedious and expensive

• Project planning is the key to success. It is vital that at all stages of design and construction; the builder makes choices that minimize the impact on the land, reduces use of energy, optimizes use of water resources, prioritizes reuse and recycling instead of use of virgin materials and reduces waste.

The Pavilion at Nivim Goa

We designed a pavilion at Nivim Goa. It is an expanded pool and garden pavilion wrapped in wood screen and glass doors. It is nestled among existing mature trees and floats over the pool deck in the front elevation. We love this special addition to Nivim.

Interestingly, we recently came across a house in Chile with a pavilion set among the breathtaking landscape of Andean mountains. The pavilion has a wrap around patio with a pool. There are many parallels in design concept and look and feel of this pavilion with ours at Nivim. We thought it will be fun to share the project here. See the photos below. All photos and content courtesy : Archdaily

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House on the road to Farellones, Courtsey Archdaily

We are so happy to report that post completion, we find ourselves being published as 'House of the day' in The Wall Street Journal.

Here is my favorite excerpt from the publication,"Ms. Mangalgiri said she loves how light in the house changes throughout the day. 'The rooms are flooded with moonlight (at night)', she said, 'It is magical'".

It really is !!