Remember the house you drew as a child: a solid, square façade with a triangular roof sitting on it and two windows on the first floor, like two big, square eyes. And, a front door below, like a mouth. This stock image of a house – with a happy sun in a blue sky and a tree in the little garden in front – has lasted long, down generations and across the globe. For that matter even the houses children constructed with building blocks came up looking much the same.

If a growing clutch of millennium architects in India have their way the concept of a home or a building will change for the children of GenNow. And, with it, fortunately, our urban landscapes, not to speak of new townships and suburbia – and man’s building imprint on the planet. The notions of space are being altered with interlocking levels and imaginative ways of creating transparencies with light, water, reflections and modulated lighting. Far away from childhood drawings of stodgy, compartmentalised structures with the outside of homes completely segregated from the inside.

You need look no further than the delightfully intriguing Rastogi home in Pancheel Park, New Delhi. At night it glows from within like a giant firefly, swathed as it is with large glass windows and bathed in adaptable lighting. During the day it’s more of a subdued Day-Glo, and an inviting presence with forecourts landscaped with steps and pools. Stone, wood, concrete that is striated or has interlocking patterns make up this wonder of a three-storey ‘green’ home.

Sonali and Manit Rastogi, both much-laurelled architects, have created a dwelling that accommodates their lifestyle and adheres to their philosophy about architecture and design, and equally important, the way to live in a changing society. The afternoon I went to meet them I mistakenly walked into the residence of the senior Rastogis on the ground floor. The window-clad elongated living room with impeccable furniture and a quiet elegance opened out on one side into a patio. The junior Rastogis and their two children inhabit the two floors above.

At first glance, the first floor appears to be a clone of the ground floor. However, there is an essential difference: an atrium with circular skylights on the ceiling with an inner garden below it, in the centre of this floor. Almost Zen-like, comprised as it is of white stones and plants, it is bordered by starkly pristine wooden benches. Rooms on the second floor overlook the inner courtyard – also sky-lit during the day – and the living room.

It is hard to believe that the residence is built on just 1,000 square metres. The basement houses the Studio of Morphogenesis, the architecture and design firm the Rastogis established in 1996, with sustainability as a ‘core creative value’. The company, of which Manit is the managing director, is an association of nearly 60 architects, designers, urbanists and environmentalists.

The Pancheel Park house has a raison d’être beyond being a dwelling for a home and offices. It has been used to explore two issues vital to design today: the family as social unit and the environment. Design has clearly evolved to cater to the new joint family, one in which the different generations under the same roof can lead separate lives and yet remain connected.

For Sonali the house is their ‘entire life’. “It has our studio, Manit’s parents’ home and our home…. We are dovetailing various programmes here.” It is not merely the different lifestyles of the three generations who live here. The house also incorporates a cultural hub. Designed as an open space on the first floor, it is used for Manthan, a structured adda that serves as a meeting ground for multidisciplinary designers, creative individuals and ‘change-makers’ to share the processes behind their work. “It is for all the people in our creative life,” adds Sonali.

Interestingly, the home’s interior has largely been done by friends – from handcrafted chairs, sofas, benches and upholstery to lamps. The multitasking ‘hub’ – it has a dropdown screen – is also used to host architectural collegiums. Adds Sonali, “We also have travelling academicians who stop by. We have lectures, rustle up friends....”

Sustainability is the pivotal buzzword for the Rastogis and their colleagues. For them this involves extending the concept to include social, cultural, financial, technological and environmental sustainability. It’s a question of do or die. As Manit so succinctly puts it, “It is the idea of sustainability, of being one with nature.... There is a different consciousness that’s now emerging. We have no choice – no water, no power. After liberalisation we went down the wrong path. We were building as if we had all the abundance of wealth like the West…. It was a problem of excess, of access to excess.”

The Rastogis met as students at the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi, and then went on to the Architectural Association in London before returning to India. In England, Manit used computational models to study how animals mimicked nature. “I wanted to understand why we build so badly when nature builds so well. Look at beehives and anthills. Animals are far more diverse, aesthetic and adaptive. They get things right, and in convergence, while we disconnect, de-link ourselves from our environments.”

Another driving principle of the Rastogis and their associates is the importance of using local materials close to the building site. For a few decades, builders have been importing materials from far corners of the country and the world. Recession has, according to Manit, been ‘fantastic for architecture’.

Morphogenesis also advocates removing the boundaries separating architecture and design, as those between urbanism and environmental design in the country. Elaborates Manit, “Architects and designers have to work together. Architecture (alone)...misses the imagery of the human being. The design of a cup or an object is intrinsically designed for the human being who uses it. We deal with the convergence of the two.”
In other words: both ‘sense and sensibility’.

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