What happens when an architect marries a landscape architect? They get an urban jungle on their rooftop and a rain garden with a water harvesting recharge pit in the front yard absorbing all the precious water with no overflow, ever. The house becomes a laboratory for all the little experiments a family can indulge in – a playground of projects, a dream house of ideas and community.
As Delhi mandates rainwater harvesting across the city to combat groundwater depletion, this house in east Delhi – built by the civil engineer who also built All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), particularly the Rajendra Prasad Centre for Ophthalmic Sciences – has one of the most beautiful recharge pits in its front garden. Pipes from all over the house collect water and pour it out through a discreet chute into a pebble-covered porous pit.
This house is located in Swasthya Vihar, a cooperative colony built while AIIMS was being constructed for the doctors and supporting staff, which included Sharadchandra D Matange.
SCD Matange initially built this house in the 1980s as a single-storey structure with a whimsical love for the card game 3-2-5 (teen do paanch), which became the pattern of the railing on the parapet of the facade. Years later, even when the house was extended by his son Vijay Matange, an architect, and his daughter-in-law Anita Tikoo, a landscape architect, they not only retained the abstracted family insignia but also kept the iconography their father had prescribed during later expansions. This is important because many houses can be expanded without breaking down the entire façade – one must look towards architects and conservation architects for solutions that help families retain old houses so full of memories.
Also Read | The house Sir Sobha Singh built after Rashtrapati Bhavan
When Matangeji planned this house in the 80s, he maintained all elements of a north Indian house: a courtyard open to the sky, and a side yard situated right across from the kitchen, making this house flawlessly ventilated and airy. The house keeps direct sun out, which keeps its Kota floor cool and light. In the 80s, many Delhi houses transitioned from old terrazzo floors to varieties and colours of Kota stone. Later, in 2005, his family planned air cooling ducts connected to a rooftop cooler that even today keeps the house almost 10 degrees cooler than the outdoor temperature – a simple system with great impact.
Anita Tikoo and her husband Vijay Matange now live in this house. During the 1990s expansion, the couple added two floors to the single-storey house, building their offices on the first floor and a khwaabghar – a studio kitchen – on the second floor as a barsati that opened into Anita’s urban rooftop farm with its famed grapevine pergola.
Also Read | Chandigarh-inspired Delhi modernism, ‘Garden City’ concepts in Hauz Khas’s single-storey Casa Pia bungalow
Speaking with Anita, I saw how her training as a landscape artist made her into an exceptional chef. As she planned her rain garden near the recharge pit, built her rooftop farm, and picked her fresh produce every day, her plate grew in food diversity. Every other day Anita would put a picture of her lunch plate out on blog – A Mad Tea Party – which also can be found on Instagram. I often drooled at the eclectic varieties of Indian food that flooded her steel lunch plate with humble extravagance.
I asked her how she learnt so many ways to cook the same thing, and she recalled her days studying at a Kendriya Vidyalaya where she met people from different cities and states. She became fond of Tamil brahmin recipes which became almost a catalyst in building her repertoire of a rich lunch plate turning humble produce into regional gold.
Her kitchen is a classic 1990s kitchen – slightly modular but mostly analogue. A granite top with kitchen habits that have that continuity and seasonal flair of an Indian kitchen. The ground floor kitchen is a small house kitchen. The second kitchen is what dreams are made of, and Anita aptly calls it her khwaabghar – a studio kitchen where she invites people to learn how to bake bread, make pizzas, bottle jam, and sometimes even turn the oven into a hearth to make pottery. Anita and Vijay’s house is a functional playground of projects and ideas. With each season a new project starts, and the Khwaabghar and Anita’s living room holds all the evidence.
There is a huge lesson in this house that makes me always fawn over the design. The simple use of different coloured Kota stones keeps the identity of the house still south Asian. Her Kashmiri background is held by the gol takiyas on a gorgeous Kashmiri carpet kept on the floor for her mother, who still insists on the right way to use the gol takiya. A light stairwell with metal and wood railings. Godrej cupboards and furniture more comfortable than decorative. The air ducts and courtyard serve their solid role in keeping the house well-nourished with light and air, making this house so energy efficient that its longevity has been defined by its analogue use of space instead of becoming another amenity-laden building adding to the city’s heat.
An architect’s bungalow is always an interesting lab where one can encounter all the ethical dilemmas of what should be the core of a South Asian house. Anita and Vijay’s home, on the outside, looks like a regular Delhi house. But when closely understood, it presents simple lessons in how to live in a city grappling with pollution and an ever-increasing population.
Anica Mann works on archaeology and contemporary art in Delhi. The views expressed are personal