design ni dukaan wraps its fragmented 'enclosure house' in an undulating concrete skin

architecture designed from the inside-out

India-based studio Design ni Dukaan embarks on an ambitious endeavor to realize a ‘formless’ architecture, which takes shape as the Enclosure House. From the early design stages, this conceptual framework was born from the client’s ‘complete disinterest in how the house would look from the outside.’ Thus, the team questioned the very basis of built forms and shaped the dwelling from the inside-out — prioritizing the experience of the space from within over the exterior expression.

The resulting architecture is designed as a sprawling collection of separate parts, all wrapped within a secondary concrete skin. As the team notes: ‘it became a house without elevations, an inward-looking ‘Enclosure.”

images © Ishita Sitwala, The Fishy Project | @ishifishy

design ni dukaan embraces imperfections

The materiality of Design ni Dukaan’s Enclosure House is largely informed by its remote, rural context. With a background in farming, the client hoped to return to his roots and insisted on employing local labor. ‘As an experiment we asked a village contractor to build a sample wall in concrete, and the outcome: an unpredictable but beautiful texture caused by the shifting and warping of unbolted wooden formwork; was fascinating,’ explain the architects.

‘We decided to embrace these ‘anticipated imperfections’ as part of the construction process, even extending this choice to the use of other materials, the flooring in the corridors for example, which utilizes strips of leftover stone from the interiors to mimic the pattern of the concrete walls.’

inside the walls of the ‘enclosure house’

With its hilltop site and walled-off design, Design ni Dukaan notes that its Enclosure House takes on the expression of a citadel. The outer walls are comprised of four main surfaces — two curved and two straight — whose intersections are subtly overlapped or offset to create moments of entry. The main entrance canopy takes shape at the confluence of the two curving walls, guiding visitors inside from a threshold of raw concrete to interior spaces finished with clean, white plaster.

Much of the house is expressed with a muted material palette of concrete, kota stone, white plaster, and wood. The most private spaces of the house, the bathrooms, punctuate the interiors with pops of vibrant colored tilework and dramatically illuminated by deep skylights.

the hilltop house appears as a citadel in the landscape
the main entrance is formed at the confluence of the two curving walls

interior courtyards are formed in-between the scattered spaces

plant-life is allowed to climb the concrete walls

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project info:

project title: Enclosure House

architecture: Design ni Dukaan | @design.ni.dukaan

location: Himmatnagar, Gujurat, India

principal architect: Veeram Shah

HVAC consultants: Anjaria Associates

structural consultants: Saunrachna Strucon Pvt. Ltd
contractor: Vastu Engineers
photography: © Ishita Sitwala, The Fishy Project | @ishifishy