Design Team
Rooshad Shroff, Aneri Mehta, Khushali Chawda, Vartika Jangid, Haroon Mohammed
The Alibaug Retreat is a privately-owned property upon which stand two villas situated on a heavily contoured site.
House One has more of a social aesthetic, intended for fraternising with family and friends with plenty of shared spaces; it features five bedrooms, extensively landscaped outdoors and a large swimming pool. A home away from home (the retreat is an hour away from Mumbai by boat), the chief idea behind its design was a rendering that would create a feel vastly different from a city dwelling. We wanted the site to capture the best of its natural surroundings, remotely located as it is among the trees, with a great view of the mountains. The house was focused on the outdoors, in order to frame these vistas.
The bedrooms are enclosed, with a large undulating roof, while the residual spaces between them -- the living room, dining room and den -- have all been designed without walls, open on all sides, much like an extended verandah. The swimming pool is partly shaded by the roof and extends outward, framing the view of the valley. The terraced landscape opens out on all sides of the house, its monolithic block broken with internal courtyards, bringing light and greenery to the interior. The periphery of the block creates an enclosure using terracotta fins which pivot individually, creating privacy, and are also a means of security and weather shields.
In terms of the material used, we opted for as many vernacular options as possible; walls are made of rammed earth using local soil, the wood has also been locally sourced and the floor is concrete. Terracotta was used on much of the home's exterior as well as on the shingles of the pitched roof, designed to withstand Alibaug's heavy monsoon.
