5. September - October 2010

INTERIOR
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1. A simple frame structure requires little to set itself apart.
2. Wood-printed tiles and a bougainvillea plant unassumingly greet visitors at the doorway.
3. The underlying idea is to partially emulate the open flow of a studio apartment.
4. Cornices are absent to accentuate clean lines and wide, empty spaces.
My own construction started at the conclusion of several months
of search for a location with an uncommonly open hilltop plot,
where the road went no farther, visible effortlessly from several
miles around it. I knew almost immediately what had to be built
there. It made perfect sense—as an ardent admirer of Japanese
architecture, especially of the Zen philosophy to get rid of the
unnecessary (i.e. minimalistic)—that any house which would
stand there had to be a composite of simple forms, understated
to allow its elevated environment to flourish. And it had to be
done with basic, readily available materials from the ground up; if
only because, in any medium, form should transcend the limited
materials and budget one works with. We palpably don’t need
expensive Italian marbles in the bathroom or triple-glazed glass
in the windows (albeit the latter would have been nice) to live
comfortably.
Though the land was small, there was still serenity—a certain je
ne sais quoi—in being able to see as far as possible, even if that
view was still confined within our dust-blanketed Kathmandu. It felt
very much like one could breathe more deeply, something I’d found
impossible (a condition more psychological than geographical,
I suspect) in lands several times its size. But all that would have
been diminished had it been just a cliff, instead of its gradual slope
that helped preserve a delicate connection to the lower grounds,
bequeathing a grand illusion of size to the location that would have
been otherwise lost in crammed neighborhoods. It further reassured
me in what I wanted when I realized its viewpoint would stay
unspoiled, even to the distant future.
My design revolved around using large, wide glasses (dark tinted)
with minimal frames in between. As with a view this spectacular, I
felt any intervention would have been inelegant and unnecessary.
On the ground floor, however, the view was purposefully blocked
by tall compound walls to maintain a sense of privacy for the living
area, whilst working dialectically with the floor just above, where the
large glasses resided. To further exploit the untamed vista, a rooftop
garden was also built, with glass-clad railings, a pond full of lilies
and a few planted corn crops (just for laughs). Little details weren’t
forgotten, like the wooden terrace staircase (from the cheapest of
old woods I could find for a bona fide feel), whereas the local canon
seemed to be the terribly vanilla, circular staircase. It was a little
piece of memory—my own, awkward homage to my grandfather’s
decades-old (and long demolished) wooden home in Dharan, which
had a similar, wide wooden staircase of local aesthetics greeting
visitors.
September-October 2010
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