TAKING CUES FROM THE REGIONAL VERNACULAR TO REIMAGINE CONTEMPORARY LIVING

WITH AN OVERARCHING FOCUS ON UTILISING TRANSITIONAL SPACES, THE DESIGN FOR THE CANTILEVER HOUSE DESIGNED BY ZERO ENERGY DESIGN LAB, UPHOLDS THE IMPORTANCE OF SUCH SPACES IN PROVIDING ADAPTABILITY AND ENHANCING THE BUILT QUALITY OF THE ENVIRONMENT.

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The Cantilever House draws from the regional vernacular and finds expression through a contemporary lens to become a home for a family of four. Located in the Raj Nagar locality of Ghaziabad, part of the National Capital Region of Delhi, the house is designed in response to the clients’ love for the outdoors. It employs a series of mechanisms that minimise resource consumption, and reduce the building’s environmental impact while enhancing the residents’ thermal comfort.

PROJECT INFORMATION

Typology: Residential

Name of project: Cantilever House (Raj Nagar Residence)

Location: Ghaziabad, NCR

Principal architect: Zero Energy Design Lab

Design leads: Sachin and Payal Rastogi

Design team: Rohan Mishra, Naveen Pahal, Sakshi Jain

Site area: 830 sq. m

Built-up area: 725 sq. m

Photographer: Andre J. Fanthome, Noughts and Crosses

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

The large cantilevers that the house derives its name from, anchor its design vocabulary, highlighting the scale of the building and breaking its mass through the focus on horizontality.

The primary challenge was to design the frame with judicious use of steel for economic viability, given that the cantilevers form a dominant part of the design scheme and a typical one demands adequate steel reinforcement to generate structural integrity.

Additionally, the design received scepticism from the client, and workers on the site had to be trained to execute the construction with precision.