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Home » Palmyra House
Record HousesResidential Architecture

Palmyra House

Studio Mumbai names two louvered boxes Palmyra house after a popular Indian tree.

Palmyra House

The Palmyra House is set in a working coconut plantation. So as not to disturb the land, much of the house was built by hand by the architect's longstanding team of carpenters.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

Divided into two volumes, the house forces its inhabitants to be engaged with nature.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

Divided into two volumes, the house forces its inhabitants to be engaged with nature.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

Palmyra, a very popular local palm tree, was dried and cut to make the house's ubiquitous louvers that let in air and light.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

The dining area faces the pool sitting in the middle of the 25- foot-wide court and the living room beyond.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

The northern volume features a master bedroom overlooking a living area. Gray-green Indian patent-stone flooring (hand-finished, pigmented cement plaster) echoes the tone that coconut bark attains during the monsoon season.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra Arch

The master bedroom features an open-to-the-sky copper shower enclosure with a small window offering a peek at the ocean.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

The stairs, like much of the house's interior, are made from ain wood, another local species.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra Arch

The master bedroom.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra Arch

The study is one of the house's many spaces that open entirely to the outdoors.

Photo courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

Image courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

Image courtesy Studio Mumbai

Palmyra House

Image courtesy Studio Mumbai

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Palmyra House
Palmyra House
Palmyra House
Palmyra House
Palmyra House
Palmyra Arch
Palmyra House
Palmyra Arch
Palmyra Arch
Palmyra House
Palmyra House
Palmyra House
April 1, 2008
Prathima Manohar
KEYWORDS India
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Architects & Firms

Studio Mumbai

Mumbai, India

Record Houses 2008

Glenburn House H16 Maltman Bungalows Palmyra House The Rolling Huts Wall House Dairy House Nora House VH r-10 gHouse

People/Products

It is said that the Palmyra tree can be used in 800 different ways. Its leaves make fine hats, thatching, umbrellas, mats, and baskets; its fruits and their sap, popularly called toddy, are a local delicacy. Architect Bijoy Jain, however, is perhaps the only person who has named a house after it. He designed the Palmyra House with signature louvers made from the tree’s cut, dried, and locally harvested wood, setting a course of using sustainable, regional materials to guide the project.

Located in the Alibaug area of India where this hardy species grows in abundance, the house evokes an amalgam of vernacular architecture and contemporary design. Jain relied on his intuition to guide his process. “There is a constant struggle to understand the sense of that intuition and finding a method within myself to be as honest to it as possible. In this case, it was about a light, air-filled volume,” he says.

In the end, the architect built not just one volume, but two louvered wooden boxes in a functioning coconut plantation in Nandgaon, a quiet, sun-drenched land of palm trees where time seems to stand still and the natives go about their daily chores as they did ages ago. However, given that India’s restless financial capital, Mumbai, sits just an hour across nearby Mandwa Bay, the area has long been favored by wealthy Mumbaikars seeking weekend homes and a place to relax. Not surprisingly, the region is dotted with exciting new architecture commissioned by some of India’s richest clients. Palmyra House serves as a vacation home for a Mumbai-based entrepreneur and his family.

Accessed by foot, roughly 165 feet from the road, the house’s two rectangles encompass 3,000 square feet and are anchored to a stone plinth. A 25-foot-wide open court separates the buildings, with a pool that alludes to the plantation’s 80-year-old system of stone aqueducts. The house offers dramatic views of the Indian Ocean and was situated to disturb as little as possible the densely planted palms on the 1-acre plot.


People

Architect

Studio Mumbai Architects
556 N.M. Joshi Marg
Byculla West
Mumbai 400 011
INDIA
Tel: +91 22 65 777 560
Fax: +91 22 23 012 973

Principal Architect:

Bijoy Jain

Project Team: 

Jeevaram Suthar, Mangesh Mhatre, Roy Katz, Samuel Barclay, Faheem Khan, Mohammed Nizam, Punaram Suthar, Jean Marc Moreno

Interior designer: 

Studio Mumbai Architects

Consultant(s)

Landscape:

Studio Mumbai Architects

Lighting: 

Studio Mumbai Architects

General contractor:

Studio Mumbai Architects

Photographer(s)

Samuel Barclay
Tanya Fleisher
Geoffrey Johnston
Ben Lepley
Roy Katz
Prabuddha Das Gupta

CAD system, project management, or other software used:

AutoCAD 2006 

 

 

Products

Roofing

Metal:

Jean Marc Moreno

 

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