Chaitanya
103 Chamiers

A project on a tight MSB site, on one of the city’s popular roads, with requirements that kept changing through the design process. It kept us busy, but never allowed us to lose sight of what we wanted to do.

 

We introduced open gardens on every alternate floor, accessed from the common areas, giving residents a little respite from the density of the city. The staircase opens into these gardens, extending the visual space and making the movement through the building a little less enclosed.

 

The individual homes, as always, were planned efficiently. Services were carefully integrated, allowing the spaces to remain simple and uncluttered.

 

The built and the unbuilt come together to form a single block of housing, where the gardens become as important as the built spaces.

 

The facade is deliberately simple. The changing angles of the front allowed us to modulate the skin, breaking down its scale rather than allowing it to read as one large surface.

 

And then there is the colour. Unlike anything around it, it almost feels like a marker on the road. Perhaps someone passing by will stop, look, and wonder…

 

At the terrace, the gardens take the experience further, extending the view towards the Boat Club and, beyond it, the sky.

 

Perhaps that is all we were trying to do — make a dense piece of housing feel a little more open, a little more generous, and a little more connected to the city around it.