TL House

Klaus-Peter Gast

Description

Almost all the rooms in this house face the waterways here on the famous Backwaters, Southern India’s natural system of wide canals, directly behind the coastline. This produces a ‘shop-window’ façade on the water side with door-high openings along the whole length, blurring the spatial boundaries and expanding living into the natural space. The intense presence of the dense, almost enclosing natural green on both sides, in combination with the level, wide, calm and yet mobile surface of the water, creates an atmosphere of relaxed, lively and natural living. Generous terraces and balconies provide protection against rain and sun, but vigorously suggest living ‘outside’ and fully experiencing this external space. The building as an object, with its prismatic outline in homogeneous white, contrasts and harmonizes with the dominant growth all around it. Living, cooking, the staircase and a guest apartment are on the ground floor, grouped around the two-storey entrance hall as the ‘heart’ of the building. Entrance patio and hall permit a ‘framed view’ of the large enclosed opening to the street, setting the focus on the entire length of this section of the plot. The first floor contains the bed- and bathroom area with balconies and a workroom. An umbrella roof as a shady roof terrace imposes form; it provides the upper conclusion and guarantees a spectacular view into the distance. This area does not just offer shade, but above all creates space for experiencing nature; it is both strictly enclosed and open on all sides. Here living relates directly to the surrounding world of plants and animals, climate, the smells, noises and light; this is an outdoor interior, a ‘natural living room’.