Project: The House of Multiple Courts
Location: Nachinola, Goa
Architects: Sameep Padora Associates
Interior Design: Tarun Tahiliani
Design Team: Nikita Khatwani, Subham Pani, Aparna Dhareshwar
Area: 10,000 sq feet.
Year of Completion: 2019
The House of Multiple Courts at Nachinola is located in in a settlement in the midst of a serene littoral landscape adjacent to lush paddy fields. The interior programs of the house pivot around a series of courts the first of which is an entrance designed through the water court, a restored existing well found on site. The sequence of courtyard experience is scaled to respond to varying degrees of common private programs. An open to sky central courtyard ties the whole house leading to programs of the living room, dining space eventually to the swimming pool overlooking the riverine landscape. The bedrooms open into smaller, more intimate courtyards with their roofs modulated to cascade rainwater into these landscaped courts. The house is built out of load-bearing laterite blocks on three sides with the walls manifesting as opaque walls, porous screens and structural corbels. The architecture of the house at Nachinola is hence a device for framing the horizontal scale of the riverine landscape beyond and conversely captures a scaled version of the landscape within the house.
