An anonymous writer from Bengaluru, India, after stumbling across one of the many poignant projects conceived by Indian architectural firm Samira Rathod Design Atelier (SRDA) in a newspaper, decided to reach out to them. Determined, they wrote a letter to the firm’s principal architect and founder, Samira Rathod, with a proposal to design a building for their village Byrasandra, as a landmark wholly devoted to its people. “I spontaneously agreed to go meet... assuming she was a young woman who wanted to do something for a place her roots (lay) in,” the Indian architect recalls. Contrary to Rathod’s assumption, the person who had authored the request was HRS Rao, ‘this hunch-backed, walking-with-a-stick, and charismatic 88-year-old man,’ who lovingly desired to dedicate a building to his land and people.

The Harvard alumnus had returned to the town of Hosur in Tamil Nadu, India, after living in the US for years, heading and settling back in his motherland, simply out of unwavering love for the place he truly belonged to. “He felt passionately for the village and was clear in his intent of making a building that was in memory of his ancestors and would benefit his people. From that day, each time we met on site, he would surely bring me two sandwiches for lunch,” Rathod reminisces wistfully.

Thus began SRDA’s intuitive creative journey of conceiving the One Tree Hill Community Hall back in 2015, imagining a lasting edifice that would embody the living memory of its patron, ‘a jovial soul, young at heart and pure in intention,’ cementing his connection to his birthland, while becoming a beneficial and powerful identity to the people it would begin catering to. In the process of conceiving the hall, Rao and Rathod’s relationship grew over time, peppered with slight disagreements when it came to the design, yet greatly dovetailed by faith as well as mutual trust and respect.

Unfortunately, Rao, aged 93, passed away last year before seeing his dream manifest in completeness. Yet, SRDA believes that the community centre, now complete after five years of toil as a composed verse in granite, is mitred with his soul and passion, within each stone, each corner, each surfaced detail. “His legacy lives on through the Byrasandra Community Hall, just the way he would have liked it…,” the firm believes.

The built as a living memory

The journey to the quaint site (located two hours from the Bengaluru airport), went leisurely through Hosur, exhibiting breathtaking lakes and natural landscapes flanked by granite-rich terrains and granite quarries, providing an indelible and rich visual, as well as textural cues for the project. As Rathod conveys, “We befriended a granite hillock on the way, which was a constant companion at a distance through our journey. That image lingered. Impressions and the textures of the rock were the first few visuals that got (our) brains churning.”

Bustling with life, the hamlet’s century-old adobe houses, wells, and warm people, especially women sitting outside their homes sifting through piles of sunshine yellow marigolds plucked fresh from their fields, furthered the project’s narrative and contextual design. “We finally reached the site, which was a small hill, with large granite boulders and a humongous species of Banyan, almost like a crown on the head of a robust monarch,” she continues.

Rao accompanied Rathod up this hill to partake in the joy of beholding the vistas stretching cinematically ahead, towards picturesque fields and a scenic lake. “It was a tenacious landscape, which over the years, I have seen change seasonally to only get better and more beautiful,” Rathod describes. It was under this majestic Banyan tree, that Rao relayed his vision for the community architecture, aspiring for it to be a ‘monumental symbol akin to the Victoria Terminus in Mumbai.’ Understanding his actual intent, this addition acted as a catalyst to SRDA's design process, with the granite distinctiveness and the Banyan tree becoming central motifs perfuming the project throughout. These narratives from the community itself were delicately braided into the contemporary architecture with intent and reverence, informing its almost pious yet modern mien and structure, which now hosts spaces for celebration, gathering, and rituals such as community weddings and public ceremonies, while being underlined by a sense of ‘timelessness.’

“He was almost hermetic now, living a frugal life. He owned more land than one could measure but had given it to farmers to grow crops. Now he wanted to make this building, which to me seemed like a very generous act. We got on board immediately,” she shares.

The plan for One Tree Hill references traditional Indian temple architecture by featuring a central hall and an outdoor circumambulation area for various activities catering to the local community. It is conceived to be a truly shared space, establishing itself as a convergent point of pride for the villagers, unmistakable in its visual prominence within the landscape. Described by the Mumbai-based firm as a ‘landmark,’ the One Tree Hill Community Hall also elucidates a sense of ownership within the locals, through its dedicated community engagement. Rathod relays how there is an almost magical aura to the architecture now, in how it begins to declare itself as a silhouette from almost a kilometre away, as a visual marker in an otherwise horizontal panorama.

Parallelly, the cultural as well as natural context of the small, lake-touching village with a few settlements deeply influenced the community hall’s architecture, in tandem with being informed by a sacred shrine resting on the periphery of it. Settled under an arch manifested by drooping branches of two Banyan trees (which are in themselves considered sacred), this shrine holds a crucial value for the community, having hosted religious and allied ceremonies of importance.  “Surprisingly so, this shrine (remains) in an axis with the site for the project, a nuance we discovered after having started work,” the architect comments.

“Such narratives have not only informed the architecture but also layered it with a lot more meaning. These narratives of the social, of nostalgia, of material, of the rock and the tree, have been subtly built into the design, for the users to celebrate and enjoy while inhabiting the building,” Rathod reiterates.

Choreographing ‘architectural moves’

There is love and grandeur in the thoughtful and pronounced simplicity of the community building, which is also pervaded with SRDA’s design philosophy of articulating architecture ‘as an experience that unfolds gradually,’ as witnessed in its interstitial spaces layered with sensory richness. Every element, whether external or part of the interior design, is sincere, from field-inspired flooring patterns to reclaimed eucalyptus logs, augmenting the structure’s being with meaning and aesthetic profundity. The building balances the brutal solidity and harshness of thick stone walls with the lightness of a ‘floating’ stone ceiling, as well as the incorporation of poised fins of steel. 

Brutal in form and strict in demeanour, the Indian architecture softens and engages through subtle plays of scales and proportions, tender intercessions of natural light through few yet meaningful apertures, and nuanced spaces that unravel, fasten, slow down and open up as if choreographed, tall and proud as trees or bending low in reverence, to impart spatial narratives of serene discovery. Dark spaces are edged with modest light, while generous ones get subdued with simple geometric features, as the stillness of granite takes over the building’s being.

Expressed in thick stone with no openings, some walls remain stern—dead stonewalls that persist in the worship of granite as a material. Concurrently, the main hall is given a reprieve in the way it is designed to feel lighter in its open, generous space, ‘as if the stone floats above.’ Here, the ceiling sags while the slender steel fins holding it resemble the bows of a tree, delicately held by branches yet shade-giving. The staircase design here too, curves gently, accommodating its close-fitted space in a way that visitors’ arms tend to frisk gently over the cold granite’s texture. Eventually, one ascends onto the community centre’s terrace in an opportune manner—the open space with its considerable views of the stretching landscape and lake was intentionally composed as ‘architectural moves’ building into the choreography of One Tree Hill.

“I also have to be honest: many things in the building are serendipitous finds from around the site. The fields and the different blooming flowers peppered across the landscape have been imbibed into the building as patterns for flooring; different coloured stone chips inlaid in cement floors resemble the fields around as if they walked into the hall; the ceiling is done in broken tiles and glistens with a beam of light falling over it, just like the lake glistening on a summer afternoon. The ceiling brightens the space of the hall within,” Rathod elaborates. 

Furthermore, the tree chunks that secure the roof ever so delicately are old, dead eucalyptus logs that were discovered in the vicinity and put to use.  “One would not believe it, but the craftsmen on site were hesitant to show me patterns on the logs that were formed by termites eating away at them. They thought I would reject them all. Upon seeing them, I was stunned. They were pieces of art that nature had made, almost like mementoes. It was like coming back a full circle,” she continued.

Skylights are incorporated as small dots within the contextual architecture, as ceiling apertures that permit slight beams of light to enter and decorate the hall, shifting as the sun makes its diurnal journey across the sky. “One really notices light spots at different positions at different times, almost like a game of hide and seek, appearing and disappearing. Layers like these have really made the architecture richer and the experience more sensual, than just the plain function for which architecture is usually made for. For us, it is just not building material that makes architecture: for us, light, sound, and water are materials as well,” Rathod relays.

“To us, architecture is not merely about the visual, but more so about theatre, about choreography, about the arousal of the senses, the experience. There is a beginning, a middle, and an end, all of which are roughly scripted—however, there is enough room for hermeneutics. We tend to design in ways where the building or its experience is not given away at one glimpse, but one is expected to experience it in a way where the building reveals and unravels itself with each turn, each step or movement. The interstitial forms a very important part in the making of architecture,” she explains further.

Beautiful, Lasting, Indigenous, Recycled, and Small-Scale

These virtues also extend SRDA’s sustainability philosophy into the narrative design, which utilises in abundance, local granite, indigenous techniques, as well as recycled materials, while exercising a small ecological footprint. “While we always say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, beauty also is something done with rigour, one that evokes emotion, one that allows an experience and interpretation.  Beauty in everyday life brings dignity, calm and peace. It is the only way forward. We always strive to make our works beautiful and for us, beauty is sustainability. We believe in using local materials for building and rely on indigenous techniques and knowledge that craftsmen bring on board for construction. Materials are often reused and recycled in our works, the footprints are kept small, and architecture is made richer through smaller details. This for us, is sustainability,” says Samira, comprehensively accommodating what sustainable architecture means for SRDA, explained through their concept and philosophy of ‘BLIRS.’

According to the design team, the entire project’s granite stonework (for which granite was sourced from the quarries around the site), was worked upon by a team of local Muslim craftsmen belonging to the same region. “The entire team has stuck around from cutting the first piece of stone to the very last finishing piece. This has given all a great sense of teamwork and a personal connection as well as a sense of pride in the work undertaken,” asserts the design team.

Sections of old temples were examined to learn the technique of articulating the core in bricks and clad with thick, three-four inches of stone. The same method was overlaid in the stone architecture, to prevent it from becoming too weighty as most stone constructions end up demonstrating. Every piece of stone employed boasts of being hand-cut, hand-chiselled, shaped into desired forms, and also hand-dressed, to reveal its textural demeanour, and in some places, intentionally dented to create patterns in stone. “The stone is then almost woven, strung together with metal rods within, such that it stays on for much longer and doesn’t fall apart,” Rathod expounds.

With an area covering approximately 669 sqm, SRDA also confirms that the building in its typology is ‘rather small.’ Higher attention was bestowed to the details dressing it: from the joineries in stone, the fragility of the metal braces, the thick metal railings, to the stone pitching, all intricacies are intentional, emblematic, and meticulous. The building’s walls were clothed in mud plasters made from material found on site, referring to the villages’ adobe houses. “Hence, a sense of local craftsmanship and many local materials and techniques render a unique semantic to the building. If this is not sustainable, what is?” she asks. A profound and essential inquiry. 

For its people, by its people

Congregational spaces are often identified as nodes and stages of power, where ownership and community implant a sense of belonging for all who participate. Spatial fabrics such as these are usually observed in typologies of religious architecture, or on cross-roads, community verandahs, educational buildings, and more. Here, Rao’s vision for this powerful space was manifested within One Tree Hill, a building envisioned by one of the ground’s children and built by his siblings in the community. His dream, and now that of many there, is for the stone community centre to bear witness to many generations gathering together.

“The One Tree Hill Community Hall is more than just a building; it is a testament to the passion and dedication of Mr HRS Rao and the collaborative spirit of SRDA. Enriched by the site's natural beauty and the community's stories, Byrasandra now has a building which is made for its people, by its people. This gives them an immense sense of ownership for what they can call their own. We have made efforts to give back to the community, a building that they are proud of and enjoy.  We are also eagerly waiting for people to start using it. Maybe time will tell us if they really enjoy the building or not. The building awaits to be taken over by its people and the nature around it,” SRDA hopes.

We would like to express our gratitude to the late Mr HRS Rao, Mr Kamlesh Rao, his son, and the entire Rao family for their support through the journey of making this building. Great thanks to Muniraj, Balachandran, and Srinath, who have been the onsite pillars for getting this building executed in the way SRDA envisioned it. The biggest thank you to the entire team of craftsmen who have put their blood and sweat into making this building for the people of Byrasandra. - SRDA

Project Details

Name: One Tree Hill
Location: Hosur, Tamil Nadu, India
Area: 668.9019 sqm
Year of completion: 2022
Architect: Samira Rathod Design Atelier (SRDA)
Design team: Samira Rathod (lead architect); Hetu Jariwala (project architect); Sunain Dalwani, Manjit Patil, Madhura Jamsandekar, Nikhil Periaswamy
Structural Design: B L Manjunath (Manjunath and Company)
Contractors: Sri Neralu Constructions, Karnataka
PMC: UKB Project Management