Sublime Ordinariness

Vasind, Maharashtra

2012 - 2016

The housing project is located about 60 km to the north east of Mumbai which houses 54 families of staff working in the industrial facility of a color coating plant for a large corporate group.

Family, relatives and community play a critical role in Indian society. Festivals, religious ceremonies and other events are unimaginable without the larger family and community. The housing has been designed keeping these socio-cultural realities in mind.

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Using the Mumbai chawl as a reference to organize the spaces, we saw it as a typology with tremendous possibility of being a social catalyst. Four apartments of 540 sq.ft. each are strung along a corridor space. At the end of which sits the staircase. On the ground floor , the apartments are accessible individually having their own small semi private space, resembling the characteristic "otla" ( raised entrance level plinth) seen in the traditional  houses of India ( pols, wadas etc) . Three  blocks come together along with the semi round monolithic block to form this large central community space into which all the corridors open.

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[Credits]

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