Photography: Saurabh Suryan and Lokesh Dangthe powerful aesthetic presence of natural
materials.’ Using their decade-long experience
of working with local materials in India,
Vir Gupta and Mueller selected three primary
elements for the house: machine-moulded
red brick, concrete and teak timber sourced
from the forests of Madhya Pradesh.
‘The real character of the house can be
seen in the exposed brick pattern and
texture. The surface is tactile, almost like
an armadillo shell,’ says Vir Gupta, who
explains that, while the brick walls may
appear to be ornamental, they in fact form
the load-bearing structural element of the
house and provide a tough skin protecting
its inhabitants from the heat and dust.
Their pattern also creates hundreds of micro-
shadows across the façade, cooling the house
and directing heat away. Never in need ofpaint, it is a system that is both self-sufficient
and architecturally bold.
An engineer by training, Singh is
fascinated by architecture and spent hours
looking at the plans of previous designs by
Vir.Mueller Architects to understand the
principles of design. He wanted the house
to be a handcrafted, self-directed project that
reflected egalitarian principles throughout
its construction, too. This meant avoiding
commercial building contractors, with
their pre-existing expertise, says Vir Gupta.
‘We hired a team of 20 daily wage labourers.
They worked by developing prototypes
of each element of the house without fully
grasping the wider context of what they
were making.’
This created a new challenge for the
architects, as plans and instructions had tobe crystal clear in order to be understood by
an unskilled and mostly illiterate workforce.
This experience led to further questions
about how to design an ‘egalitarian’
architecture for India. ‘In a country that is
urbanising very quickly, but where a lot
of construction work is of poor quality, the
house was an attempt to propose a simple
design methodology, capable of delivering
a high-quality architectural proposition,’
says Vir Gupta.
The Singh house is certainly a functional
model for building and living. Practical and
hardy, it is also influenced by local context
and natural processes, developing shapely
patterns and systems to solve environmental
obstacles. One can hope it will become the
model for many more new builds. ∂
virmueller.comCLOCKWISE FROM
TOP LEFT, THE STRIKING
FAÇADE IN BRICK AND
CONCRETE; THE STAIRS
LEADING DOWN TO
THE BASEMENT; ANGLED
VERTICAL BRICK WALLS
BLOCK DIRECT SUNLIGHT
AND KEEP THE HOUSE
COOL; THE CENTRAL
AXIS OF THE HOUSE,
WITH FLOORS IN LOCAL
WHITE DUNGRI MARBLE‘The real character of the house lies in the brick pattern.
The surface is tactile, almost like an armadillo shell’
166 ∑
Architecture