Sporty House, Mandikhatar

The client has design sketches from a popular architect in Kathmandu, I first felt odd why he didn't go with a renowned architect. My client showed me even a few CAD drawings by the architect. The first thing I instructed the client was he can afford to have two architects for a project but that was not acceptable for me. So I did after a client brief was visiting the site on 25 July 2019 and more later. We both decided to design from scratch since the previous sketch had nothing to do with the site terrain. The site was on sloped terrain, so I took a step-design concept that is an incremental increase in claiming space as the building takes its height. The client is very sensitive to aesthetic, exterior architecture and he wanted his house to be the most unique. So, free hand sketches and 3-D visualization were very helpful as well as my hand drawn sketches. The front facade is the most important part facing the main road dominating the landscape. There have been numerous changes in design of the front façade. The client liked the idea of a sporty (a sense of lightness and quick) look in the building. I played with thin horizontal and vertical bands, mass and void proportion and pushed the volume backwards as the building gets higher. The whole idea of spatial configuration is divided into two parts, lower three storeys are dedicated to rental space with access from the front road and upper parts for the family residential purposes from the back road at a height of 9-meter level. The building construction started in 2018 and was completed in 2020.