A plot of land with a real machan, a wacky idea, an enterprising architect. This getaway in Lonavala provides an unusual experience. Himanshu Burte got a bird’s eye view
How do you build on a wooded hillside without destroying the trees? Lonavala-based architect Shabbir Unwala of Design Workshop took recourse to simple logic — build like the trees themselves. The Machan (literally a platform built on a tree to observe wildlife) is a holiday home on stilts near Lonavala, the hill-station beloved of Mumbaikars. Nestled in the middle of a nurtured forest, it commands a spectacular view of a valley running into the distance.
Built in steel, wood and glass, and held aloft on four concrete columns, The Machan is a unique experiment. To enter it, you walk up a drawbridge, which is actually drawn up at night when guests so desire. Already off the electric grid (electricity is of wind and solar origin on the property), the cottage is then physically isolated amidst the trees.
The project
The client, Mumbai-based retired professional Pavan Hooja, had a real machan on a wild fig tree on this site for years before this project was conceived. Hooja bought the barren 25-acre piece of land 15 years ago, and reforested it by stopping the slash-and-burn strategy of the villagers and letting the local Western Ghats trees recover and grow. His brief to Design Workshop was simple: build a habitable space in the woods without cutting down trees. The living areas would also have to make the most of the spectacular view of the valley and flanking hills in the distance.
The experience
The sense of being off the ground is central to The Machan experience, beginning with the walk on the slightly bouncy drawbridge. The entrance lobby that shows you the hillside slipping away down below reinforces it. And finally, the living space with its breathtaking wide- format view over the treetops down the hill, of the valley snaking away into the far distance, clinches the sense of floating above the ground.
That sense is heightened by the two bedrooms, one at a higher level and another suspended from the underside of the living area. The upper bedroom feels like an attic up by the roof boards (made of Malaysian sal) and it looks over treetops on all three sides. The lower bedroom is truly a space slung under another. Inside, it is like being inside a glass box under the ‘chassis’ of the house, watching the trees make their way up.
Maximising the view
Making the most of the view involved more than just using the biggest sheets of glass for window walls. Two issues have been addressed in the design — ventilation and visibility. For ventilation, narrow bands of ventilators (a stainless steel mesh in a wooden frame) have been placed under the glazing towards the courtyard and the sides away from the main view. Two cosy balconies offer a perch over the forest and also bring air from different directions into the living space.
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One problem with glass is that reflections from behind often interfere with the view you see through it. A simple solution for this is to tilt the glass out at the top, which also reinforces the tree like ‘flaring’ of the exterior form in this building. That is what also makes the building look a little like a spaceship amid the trees.
The design
The design concept emerged naturally out of the design brief. To minimise the cutting of trees the architect decided to restrict the footprint of the building on the ground. The basic structure of the building is thus like a tree: a narrow trunk which rises off the ground, with branches that support and form the large volume of the crown.
A frame of four reinforced cement concrete (RCC) columns tied with beams at two levels acts like the trunk, which is about 20 feet high at most. A relatively light pre-fabricated steel structure branches out in all directions and forms the skeleton of the building. An old tree is retained in the hollow between the columns which acts like an internal courtyard for the house in the air.
Ecological benefits
One of the chief ecological problems caused by construction is damage to the land on which a building sits. Construction-as-usual involves a lot of digging and backfilling which completely destroys precious topsoil. By touching the ground on a much smaller footprint and cantilevering a large part of structure the architect has managed to reduce damage to the land. This prompted CNN to include The Machan in its ‘List of Sustainable Technologies and its Applications for the Future’. Of course, this strategy involves using energy-intensive materials like steel and concrete, which may cancel out the ecological advantage of reducing damage to land. But the reckoning of ecological impact is never a simple matter. The seesaw tilts back in favour of this approach because this building is largely dismantlable. This means that a large part of the material can be reclaimed and reused if ever the building has to ‘go’.
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