Project Type: Ideas Competition
Project Brief: The challenge is to design a house that is naturally lit up at all times of the day and does not require any artificial light. We are asked to design a residence for an individual family for the above requirement.
Location: Kiangwe Coast, Kenya
Role: Architect
Project Timeline: 2022 - 2023
Design Team: Architect Abhijit & Architect Asjad
The Home of Shadows is a self explanatory competition. It was one of those designs where the competition brief was as exciting as the design itself. We tried many different approaches to this competition but the most striking and obvious one was that it needed to be a house with a lot of openings.
We chose our site adjacent to a lake for a very specific reason which we will get to shortly. The main structure was once again segregated in two levels. Most of the house had open spaces. We had shear curtains inside the house to have constant light coming in at all points of the day. We planned one attached balcony with the living area as well as one attached balcony with the bedroom to get a flow of constant breeze into the spaces.
We had skylights placed in as many places as required to make sure there was constant light in the house even when the climate seemed dull. One challenge with the skylights was to make sure they don't disrupt the life inside the house. We came up with a roof design that can open and close as the tide currents rose and dropped water levels. The morning inward tides would rotate water mill structure and thereby close the roof to keep out the heat, whereas the evening outward tides would rotate the mill structure the other way and open the roof to the night sky, letting in as much moonlight as possible.
The location was as important as the design itself and we needed as many open areas around the site as we could. Unfortunately, our design could not achieve a winning position but we believe we were once again up to the challenge and quite close to achieving what we set out to with the design.