Bengaluru-based The Purple Ink Studio is a firm proponent of the ‘Kilometer Zero’ concept, and designs all its projects using creative templates of environmental sustainability.
Born in 2011, Bengaluru-based The Purple Ink Studio may be a relative baby in the design market, but its sights are firmly fixed on the future. This future is populated by ‘Eco Cities’, a vision that the firm believes can be achieved through ‘Regenerative Architecture’, a process that it follows with respect to every project.
Led by Akshay Heranjal and Aditi Pai Heranjal, this team believes in building spaces that are interactive, functional and evidently, as low on manufactured frills as possible.
King’s House Project, Bengaluru
The greatest test of architectural acumen in the city of Bengaluru has recently come to be this – the dexterous amalgamation of globally relevant design with the preservation of increasingly precious little natural green cover. The King’s House Project wasn’t any different, except for the fact that it had to include luxury apartments for wealthy NRIs based in the Middle East.
The 7 ‘sky residences’ here cover an impressive range of 10,000-20,000 sq ft each and they had to individually reflect the owners’ style and requirements, and also, of course, come together to form a solid, modern shell and façade.
“The design challenge was to capitalise on the potential of the 30,000 sq ft site without compromising on the existing green cover and minimising the ecological footprint of the structure. Two blocks were planned to house one apartment on each side per floor that would emerge from sunken gardens and blend into the peripheral greens amidst the site,” states the team.
The green credentials of the project are indeed its most impressive features – rainfall patterns, daylight and shadow, and shading were duly noted using solar studies and simulations; and the integrated design ensures maximum usage of natural energy, with the building acting as an “environmental filter”.
Aesthetically, the building’s design relies on the earthy and the simple. As is often the case with the super-luxurious, the façade offers up just the right hints of affluence without revealing any real privacy-threatening details. The form of the building, appropriately quirky in a city already teeming with innovative concrete structures, looks like a stack of blocks held together by gargantuan paper clips.
This extends to form a stretch of distinct blocks that are essentially super-luxurious brick formations, with greenery poking out from intermittent pockets and waving at the outside world. The team from The Purple Ink Studio has also suffused the space with elegant warm yellow lighting and plenty of manicured greenery.
Courtyard House, Bengaluru
What does one do when life is hurtling down too fast to make any sense? Find one’s way back to the basics! After a protracted embrace of the minimalist and the avantgarde, a lot of modern homes are now choosing to come up around the traditional Indian courtyard form again, and this home designed by The Purple Ink Studio in Bengaluru is a prime example of that throwback.
As is the firm’s MO, environmental connectivity and energy-use efficiency were the focal points in the design process here. “The site is east facing and has a vast public green space on the North side. The landscape scheme is conceptualised on generating continuity with the surroundings and drawing the lines into the interiors of the building and connecting them with the courtyard which houses a sculptural tree,” the team states.
The home’s sharp, angular shell encloses a decidedly South Indian interior space that is suffused with natural air and light, and a pleasing colour-scheme formed of stone, wood, canary yellow and deep maroons. Placed almost centrally beside the courtyard of the house is a beautiful, graceful wooden staircase that will strongly remind one of some old musical instrument, now re-imagined, scaled up and polished to shimmer.
The elegant placement of interior spaces and green nooks and swathes continue here too. There is even a water channel built in tandem with the wind direction so as to support the placid micro-climate of the home. “This project was one of our first attempts at the “Kilometer Zero” concept where the entire food generation for the project happens on site with the focus on productive landscapes,” adds the team.
International School, Hubli
The days of the brooding, monolithic school building blocks are long dead. Nowadays, educational establishments aim for interactive spaces and classrooms that aren’t constrained by walls.
In keeping with this spirit of aesthetic revolution, The Purple Ink Studio is working the 40,000 sq ft area of this project as a sprawling prototype of a complex that has been built to waltz with the natural elements as opposed to cutting them out.
“The building is sculpted entirely based on the wind, rain and sun patterns, without compromising on the quality of the spaces and its functional requirements,” states the team. The longest stretch of the complex faces west and has been broken up into stacks that are inter-connected through internal courts.
This arrangement ensures better ventilation, low heat gain, and the luxury of creating wonderful green pockets which can transform into interactive spaces. This design is another effort by the firm in the direction of ‘Kilometer Zero’ construction.
Text By Shruti Nambiar
Photographs Courtesy The Architect
Contact
email: akshay@thepurpleinkstudio.com
web: www.thepurpleinkstudio.com
