Founded in the year 2006 in Kochi, Mangrove Architecture Alliance is headed by Rajasekharan Menon and Kunjan Garg. The firm’s journey is in the process of understanding their projects as a new opportunity and challenge each time with varying conditions and they pursue a practice of exploring responsible architecture.

Mangrove Architecture Alliance, Kochi

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Every project is born out of its own set of circumstances. We understand Architecture as the process of clarifying/reinforcing the specificities of such.The creative engine of the firm is a sincere commitment to this process and the versatility it brings.

Being a young practice, we try to wade free of stylistic fixations of any sort and are still in the process of exploring a credible and responsible language of building for this part of the world.

We see as an opportunity and a challenge, the varying circumstances in every solicitation, inspite of the programme often recurring. In this sense, our work has always been heavily influenced by the desires of the client, the immediate physical context of the project, and the nature of work groups involved in building. We try to map these and make them visible, much as the mangrove reconciles and synthesises different media to stabilise and make habitable. - Mangrove Architecture Alliance

Adorned with a large L-shaped verandah, laid in a site within natural settings of Chendamangalam, a small town in central Kerala, the Unnikrishnan House designed by Mangrove Architecture Alliance based in Kochi, is a residence adapting to the typologies of the site and using local materials embracing the tradition of the town.

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Text: Shreya Shah | Images & Drawings: courtesy Mangrove Architecture Alliance

HOUSEUNNIKRISHNAN

Sunlight seeping in the house through strategically designed skylights.

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Covered internal passage courtyard along the drawing room.

False ceiling composed of terracotta tiles; the roof span as seen from the mezzanine floor level stepping up to the open terrace.

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ORIGINAL PLANS GIVEN TO THE ARCHITECTS WITH EXISTING FOUNDATION Photograph of the foundation taken in December 2009.

UPPER FLOOR PLAN

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

SECTION

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Legend:

01 Driveway02 Parking03 Tree Base04 Lotus Pond05 Entrance Verandah06 Internal Passage07 Guest Bedroom08 Toilet09 Pooja Room10 Landscape Courtyard11 Drawing Room12 Washroom13 Master Bedroom

14 Dressing Area15 Dining Room16 Water Court17 Kitchen18 Work Area19 Laundry20 Mezzanine Floor21 Living Room22 Music and Meditation Space23 Drawing Seen Below24 Daughter’s Bedroom25 Passage Seen Below26 Open Terrace

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Endeavouring toward an innovative built mass on the given foundation of the residence, Mangrove Architecture Alliance

has objectified the construction by the use of local materials like laterite stone and terracotta tiles, modifying the available wooden pieces for interiors and schematising the roof to reflect the traditional architecture of Kerala. The project was brought to them as a result of the client’s realisation that the involvement of a vaastu consultant would knock down the need of a house of their desire.

With its base been already constructed, the challenge was to carry forward the provided footprint and to propose the super-structure that would deviate as little as possible. ‘A modern spatial configuration’ was characterised by re-arranging the placements of the existing doors and windows in a new pattern. The architects generated the idea of a ‘house in the garden’. The parking was relocated and the traditional elements: screens, courtyards and shaded verandahs formed the core of the design. These elements served as the prototypical typology of the site and created a shady built environment to deal best with hot, wet climate. The functional spaces were embedded around the L-shaped verandah, and courtyards were interwoven as voids inside the solid fabric.

A balanced mix of materials composed the structure by way of masonry done using locally available laterite stone and the steel used for the roof framing to hold the roof span designed as a ‘terracotta umbrella’. An insulation cavity in the roof provides an air gap between the top roofing tile and the clay tile false ceiling.

Window opening on the mezzanine floor overlooking the passage below. An existing window frame, rearranged, forms a screen along the length of verandah.↑

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FACT FILE:

Project : Unnikrishnan HouseLocation : Chendamangalam, Kochi, KeralaArchitects : Mangrove Architecture AllianceDesign Team : Rajasekharan Menon, Kunjan Garg, Vinayadas VClient : Mr K B UnnikrishnanCivil Contractor : SebastianCarpentry Contractor : AniruddhanDuration of Project : 2010-2013

Citation:The plinth of the house existed on the site. The mandate of Mangrove Architecture Alliance was to build on the plinth to complete the imagined plan. The Unnikrishnan House represents an incredible potential that architecture has to create by flipping a seemingly crippling constraint into an opportunity. It represents the clear divide between space as a measurable dimension against space as an experienced phenomenon. The complexity clearly lies in the section.

This house is also a brilliant example of architecture that approaches a project as an interior environment – a living entity and not an object. By creating humane, tactile spaces with the right amount of light in the right places, the house creates a sanctuary for domestic life. Beyond the beautiful section lie a palette of alternative materials – of warm wood, terracotta – and a fine balance between modern and traditional. It is still an example of good contemporary architecture.

Subsequently bringing in the domestic environ, the interiors were furnished using fallen teak wood available on and around the site, creating a perfect balance by reworking the client’s original furniture and freshly designing new ones and actualising a flooring made of terracotta tiles.

The house as a whole comes together as a solid-void spatial arrangement festooned by the use of indigenous materials to mirror the identity of the milieu.

Mezzanine as seen from dining area. The complex geometry of the sloping roofs resolved to envelop the intimate spaces of the house.

The ‘terracotta umbrella’ form against the lush green context.

Warm interiors achieved by the use of natural teak wood furniture and terracotta tile flooring.

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