JAVA NATIVE
Proposal for holiday home layout of 28 homes
Coorg, Madikeri
Targeting residents of Mysore and Bangalore city, the layout featuring compact homes nestling on thick wooded slopes of a former coffee estate balances economics, functionality and beauty to be sustainable for the developers.
Layout
The land slopes from north to south, in parts very steeply, dropping to almost 65m over a length. Connecting the houses throughout with sturdy vehicular access would be necessary – but building a road on a steep slope and making it ecologically sensitive meant we work with the existing topography, keeping cut and fill required to the minimum. The plots are kept uneven sized so as to work along with the road that follows contours. Plots are between 390 and 490 sqm and the slopes on them vary from 15 to 25%. Service trenches, storm water systems and passive rain water harvesting is all strung along the contours and corresponding roads.
The landscape on the layout would integrate almost all large trees and incorporate rain gardens, indigenous planting and have a ‘trickle down’ system for irrigation. Since the homes would be only intermittently used, the waste water recycling system would be a plant bed filter type
Building design
The steep slopes are made to work to advantage by placing the homes such that views to the south valley are provided for all the homes. The design is kept simple for ease of implementation in the remote area. Two walls on the east and west with north and south opening out fully and a ‘ground hugging’ sloped roof – structurally simple, using a lot of pre cast elements that could be cast elsewhere and brought to site for assembly.