Study 02

The Ballygunge Bungalow

Type: Heritage home
Location: Concept location · Kolkata
Focus: Adaptive reuse / courtyard living
Status: Independent design study

Courtyard residence with shaded verandas, timber screens, and lush planting — A courtyard house is introduced through layered shade, planting and the timber edge of its rooms.

Project thesis

Space is held together by the relationships between rooms.

An independent study of a multigenerational bungalow where the courtyard becomes the social and climatic centre.

This concept considers a family home shaped by accumulated character and multiple generations. Its question is not how to make an old house new, but how to make its existing relationships more legible for contemporary daily life.

Spatial strategy

A conceptual reading of movement, adjacency and pause.

The courtyard is treated as an orienting void: a place to arrive at visually, move around, and borrow light from. Timber screens and deep thresholds mediate between interior rooms, planting and the weather beyond.

EntryCourtyardFamilyConcept diagram · not to scale

Spatial sequence

Heritage-style front room with tall openings, timber and garden light — Inherited openings, timber and room proportions are treated as assets rather than surfaces to erase.

Shaded house entry looking through planting toward a courtyard — Arrival unfolds through shade and planting before the courtyard is fully revealed.

Central aangan connecting the residence through a planted open courtyard — The aangan is the organising centre: a source of light, visual connection and transition between household zones.

Kitchen and dining space opening across a planted courtyard — The newer family zone opens directly to the courtyard, allowing cooking, eating and gathering to share one visual field.

Courtyard-facing living room with warm timber furniture and natural light — Interior living remains connected to planting, daylight and the rooms across the courtyard.

Timber, plaster and stone detail beside filtered daylight — Material changes clarify touch, shade and the passage between old and new.

Courtyard residence at dusk with warm interior light — At dusk, the courtyard shifts from a source of daylight to a quiet centre of the house.

Material and daily life

Atmosphere follows use, light and touch.

Timber, stone, plaster and planted shade form a deliberately quiet palette, used to make the change between exposed and sheltered spaces perceptible.

The study imagines a house that can hold shared meals, separate routines and cross-generational encounters around a common courtyard, without claiming a built renovation or delivery outcome.

The proposal keeps the courtyard at the centre of movement, so rooms retain a shared point of reference without losing privacy.
Thresholds are treated as inhabitable edges—places where shade, filtered light and changing material mark a move between inside and outside.
Rather than erasing inherited character, the study considers how old and new material languages can sit beside one another with restraint.

Next spatial study: Riverside Apartment