Architect’s Studio

For architects Nisha Mathew-Ghosh and Soumitro Ghosh, the design of their own studio was perhaps as challenging if not more amongst all their projects. The programme involved a dual use of a plot for the design studio and a home for parents.

The lower house designed for the older generation retreats from the street at ground, by parallel white planes beginning at the boundary. It is characterised by a linear composition of spaces, as the linear sequence unfolds, certain elements are expressed as smaller fragments of the whole – the wall between ‘living’ pavilion and the rest of the space; the space for worship and the sculpted wall in brown accents. Movements – both horizontal and vertical is simply placed at the center of this linear traverse. This has also been highlighted by the intervention of light through slits, designed interestingly in volume. The double height volume of the entrance foyer with the frosted glass skylight forms a visual element to the external volume as one approaches the external spiral to the studio above.

In the design of the upper house – the firm’s design studio and office, materials and form were used as expression of the exuberance of their work; in contrast to the more sober lower level. The form finished surface of the model making area and the principal’s cabin has been inscribed with continuous measurement marking of numbers that map the length of the design studio space, an influence from their Ahmedabad studio days as a tool for scale within for all to get used to the relationship between vision, space and dimension. Fluid display options have been incorporated along this wall with studs. Grey cement flooring with polished granite strips contrast the simple white laminate of storage units and workstations and black mesh chairs. Display boards of the firm’s work suspended from the ceiling serve as partitions to the workstations.

Photographs: Courtesy Soumitro Ghosh