Landour的150年英殖民时期传教所改造住宅丨新德里EDC Space建筑,室内与造型公司

Home in Landour: An incredible transformation of a 150-year-old British-era mission house

The sensitive transformation by EDC Space pours in warmth through colour, textures and materials.

Perched on an inclination, sloping steeply from town's main road, is a cosy and warm second home in Landour—the updated and repurposed avatar of a 150-year-old, British-era mission house. Rejuvenated as it is, the home’s wonderful cosiness, birthed from a tasteful deployment of art, textiles, decorative lights and wood, echoes its vintage past mellifluously.

“The brief,” say Heena Handa and Aashna Chaudhry of New Delhi-based architecture, interiors and styling firm EDC Space, “was to develop a functional, warm and inviting holiday home in Landour for three generations of a family—comfortable for all and resonating with the value of each group.”

The sunroom, flooded with natural light. Decorative flooring from Bharat Floorings punctuates the wooden expanse underfoot. Its expanse is modulated by a series of columns, part of the original structure.

While the elevated location had its benefits, accessing the home was literally an uphill task, via a series of small steps going up a trailing path. The building was constructed in stone, and inside, the 4,000-square-foot layout featured a number of split levels, with some bedrooms and kitchen on a step up from the rest of the floor. The wooden elements—flooring and frames of doors and windows—were in a deplorable state, being damaged by moisture and termites.

The stone wall lends a beautiful rusticity to the study. Note how the corner has been used to anchor a wrap-around storage unit.

During the renovation, as if the tough terrain wasn’t enough, the design team had to contend with a shell that couldn’t be touched. Ergo, the layout couldn’t be changed, neither the plumbing and, to some extent, nor the electrical. The niches and nooks in the structure had to be incorporated into the overall scheme functionally as well as aesthetically, and only surface-mounted light fixtures could be used. “We worked around the existing structure, enhancing the exposed stone, wood and columns and integrating it as a part of our concept. We had to turn the look around of the place using different materials, cheerful colours and by changing the lighting altogether,” states the duo.

For the senior members of the multigenerational family, two aspects posed a serious challenge, the steep climb to the house, and the split-levels within it. For the exterior, “the game-changing idea of smoothening out the steps to create a slope and a golf cart platform was proposed by our landscape architect, Vishal Khanna of SKA Architects,” reveal the architects. The internal problem was sorted by breaking and levelling the floor—which also allowed renewal and repair, as well as opened up the space owing to a contiguous floor plate. The matter of creating adequate storage in compact rooms was resolved by utilising corners smartly to keep linen, bedding, etc.

Standing on a custom-made cilium rug, a comfortable armchair from Diseno Furniture invites you to relax in the study.

The sunroom, the first room you encounter as you step inside this hillside haven, is a long hall featuring a line of original structural columns. Its name is justified by the extensive glazed windows and skylights that invite the tender mountain sun and the incredible views of the Himalayan inside; one energising the space with its effulgence, the other with its divine beauty. Two doorways lead from the sunroom to the dining room and the family lounge. The latter, in turn, takes you to the master bedroom, while the dining opens into to a central foyer which connects two more bedrooms, a powder room and the kitchen.

A round carpet from Obeetee and a wooden table from Solid Bench occupy centre stage of the foyer. Lights are from Murano India.

A Manuela Gomes artwork of a window adds depth to the dining room.

This bedroom brims with warmth and joie de vivre, thanks to cheerful soft furnishings and fabrics MO Furnishings, D’decor and Linen Talk. The carpet is from Obeetee, while the furniture is from Solid Bench and Diseno Furniture.

Each piece in the house is unique and custom-made for the project. All doors have been designed as mullioned doors with green coloured wood frames and glass. The wall paint of the entire house was freshened up to an eggshell white, while the wood frames, floorings and rafters were changed to a combination of oak and Burmese teak. Decorative light fixtures were custom-made to be used on the existing structural ceiling and rafters without the use of false ceiling and coves. The fabrics are a mix of modern and classic English stripes, prints and kilims in warms colours. All these add a warm and cosy vibe to an otherwise cold house. “In snowy months when the entire town is clad in white,” smile the architects, “entering the house feels like a warm and colourful hug.”