House of Reclaimed Gold reuses demolition waste for the ecologically diverse site

The House of Reclaimed Gold is a family home on ancestral farmland in Palghar, Maharashtra. Designed by Indian architects Prasad Tambe and Harshita Tophakhane of Out of the Box Eco-Architects, the project rekindles the relationship between the homeowners and the homeland, through a process that is not only empirical but also sociological.

The village, which over the years has undergone material, formal, and technological transformations, serves as a resource bank for the construction of the family home. Erstwhile homes, made of traditional materials, presently torn down to be replaced by banal, unenduring and placeless concrete structures, provide building materials like wood, stone, and clay tiles. The site itself boasts a paddy plantation and a variety of fruit-bearing trees alongside the adobe blocks, which constitute the load-bearing walls of the house. The adobe moulds, hand-crafted in situ, are a result of successive experiments on the indigenous material by local craftspersons, simultaneously reviving a lost craft, an abandoned profession, and a forgotten appreciation for sustainable architecture practices.

The building has two linear wings, oriented east-west to adapt to the harsh local climate. Centred around a fig tree, the plinth of the house is raised by three steps, which lead to the living and kitchen areas in the public wing. Two bedrooms, one with an ensuite bathroom, as well as a common bathroom, constitute the ground floor of the private wing. A shared, central verandah separates the two wings. On the first floor, this segregation is eliminated in a plan, by creating a contiguous space, composed of two separate multi-purpose halls in each of the wings, united by a verandah.

The temperature of the house is controlled naturally, not only through an east-west orientation but also through a strategic, climate responsive design, with verandahs enveloping the house to keep out the harsh light from the south and west. On the north-facing façade, small fenestrations allow the entry of soft north light, which coupled with the verandah doors facilitate cross-ventilation throughout the interior spaces of the house. At the house's entrance on the east, an entrance porch in the public wing, and a lily pond in the private wing act as buffers against the heat. The adobe walls, constructed as nine-inch thick load-bearing walls further insulate the interiors. Additionally, sloping roofs with deep eaves provide shade from the sun as well as the tropical monsoon.

The finishes, and therefore the aesthetic of walls, decks, roofs, and floors; the structural components; and the design of objects around the private residence are dictated by the availability of reusable material in the vicinity of the site. The waste from demolished traditional buildings not only provides aged timber and clay tiles for the sustainable construction of the decks and the roofs but also affords a range of doors and windows, used in their entirety, leaving a historical imprint on the house. On the other hand, chiselled basalt rocks from demolished wadas near Mumbai, India, ordained a foundation in stone construction and a masonry wall enclosing the kitchen porch. A locally sourced cartwheel punctures a window through the wall, serving as a time capsule and a rural marker.

Broken granite waste, procured from local granite depots is accommodated in the wet areas of bathrooms as anti-skid tiles arranged in a mosaic pattern. Adobe walls, constructed around moulds containing sleeves, conceal electrical conduits beneath their raw interior surfaces, terminating at switch boxes crafted from repurposed teakwood. Moreover, the farm yields timber logs that were reused to create a kitchen counter with natural edges, a basin for washing, and a support column.

Akin to the tradition of inheriting gold which is not simply a transfer of wealth but also encompasses the preservation of cultural heritage, family values, and emotional bonds that span generations, the House of Reclaimed Gold is a cohesive assemblage of material and cultural practices, reclaimed from an inherited gold mine.