Aagey se right
Location : Surat, Gujarat
Carpet Area: 1135 Sqft
Completion year : 2018
Design team: Niel Parekh, Pooja Shah, Khubchand Suthar
Photo Courtesy: Ishita Sitwala (The Fishy Project)
With the shift of people to the high-rises, the old row houses built in a quite niche of the otherwise hustling bustling city of Surat were deserted, which then were rented out for commercial use by the owners. One of these old row house was to be designed as an eclectic working space for an advertising agency. Here the main challenge was the juxtaposition of the activities in a space which was intended as a residence but now the hierarchy of the spaces were to be changed. Due to limited structural stability, no civil changes could be done in the old load bearing house.
Minimum intervention is the trace of ideas and thoughts for this space. The design features unfinished feel, combined with the plants popping in the spaces full of joyous insouciance making the overall space rough, simple yet delicate. Spatially, you enter through a narrow passage into an informal reception area with a partly double height space holding the stairwell, acting as the access point for all the activities of the office. On the ground floor, there is an entertainment room for the staff which opens on to a courtyard at the back, a conference area with a translucent long table custom made to compensate for the constrained floor space and a small pantry. The main working zone is on the first floor which limits the visitor access.
The plants and the flamboyant artwork highlights the original beauty of the existing material exposed on the floor, walls, beams and pillars. Here the constrained budget driven approach has ended with brute, edgy and raw result. This project exhibits the versatility of the row house typology to accommodate different activities.
