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About forty minutes from Ahmedabad, not long after the highway has been replaced by fields and the pigeons by plum-headed parakeets, there is a village by the name of Jaspur. It’s nondescript by most standards, no different from the village before or after it. Or so a first impression will have you believe. But inside, past the paddocks of peanut and sesame and the matchbox homes that line the street fronts, is something most locals avow can be found nowhere else in the world. “It’s locally known as the Flying Saucer House,” says architect Tejas Kathiriya, founder and principal of Ahmedabad-based architecture firm studio prAcademics. No, the home, shaped like a UFO, doesn’t belong to aliens, although most people, local or not, will agree that its appeal is nothing short of otherworldly. Commissioned as a weekend villa for an extended family of fourteen, the brief was to design a home that was unique, yet still true to the rural landscape. Exactly how unique it would be was something the family could never have fathomed.
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Ringside View
For Kathiriya and his fellow architects, Bhumin Dhanani, Gaurang Mistry, Dhara Vavadia and Shilpa Satheesh, the inspiration didn’t come from as far as outer space. Instead, it came from (the) earth, specifically from the traditional vernacular of Saurashtra, characterised by open-to-sky entrance spaces (for light and ventilation) and linear verandahs, or osri, designed to act as buffer areas for informal seating, circulation and repose. Shaping the weekend villa like a ring, then, seemed like a sensible starting point. It would afford plenty of privacy to the bedrooms while framing the vistas around.
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Natural Surroundings
With over 120 trees, most mango and chikoo, the site had long served as a sanctuary for birds. But it was so engulfed in foliage, that there was little room to build. “We intended to insert the built form into the landscape without interfering with nature,” says Kathiriya, who undertook an exercise in architectural retrofitting, elevating the house by three metres and introducing a cantilevered projection to combat the contoured topography. With nature woven into every bit of the architecture, it’s difficult to say where or whether one ends and the other begins. For even today, the landscape retains the authenticity it did all those years ago. The only difference, perhaps, is that now, it serves as a sanctuary for birds and people alike.
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