House !
What is a House ? What makes it beautiful, comfortable, cozy, shabby, clean ? Is it a space, light, noise, colors, furniture, people ?
In architectural terms, everything. And in philosophical terms, everything + something. I would like to share only one aspect out of all above which I am thinking last many months. It is about Inward looking house and outward looking house.
When we say we stay in a flat, we are generally talking about inward looking space where most of the things which we refer beautiful or ugly are INSIDE the house. It is very difficult to comment on anything outside as we do not have control on it. Expect we are supper lucky (Rather supper rich) to have a beach / mountain view right in front of our terrace, we all get opportunity to have a more or less similar houses forcing to look inside and comment on it.
In auroville, we get opportunity to stay in most of the house where everything outside is extremely beautiful and you have very less control on making inside of the house the way you like. Totally opposite to typical FLAT system, we get readymade fully furnished houses without any choice to change anything inside but they strongly promote to look outside and comment. Generally, half of the house is just a (semi covered) terrace where dining, living, wash area, sitting, shoe rack, storage and all such activities take place. As security is not a issue, except a small piece of wardrobe, nothing is lockable or even closed. Surrounding is generally full of forest with zero vision from any nearby house which automatically makes it outward looking house.
In inward looking houses (in flats), you mandatorily need to texture paint specific wall, hang some posters, add few artifacts, play a bit in material and colors, etc. etc. because those are really strong points of a beautiful house in this context. Also, it becomes important which portion of the house you see from entrance, which portion is hidden, how much spacial feel the room gives you, how much light comes in and how far can you carry it. Again, this is only day time we are talking about. In evening, the house becomes 100% inside looking with all lights on, T.V. on, and windows closed for mosquitos !
In outward looking houses (in Auroville or some bungalows), you can decorate interior intensively, but hardly anything is noticed. (It is my opinion after staying in 6 houses in Auroville and more than a dozen houses in Pune). I think, the reason is - if a human being is given an option to see any man made beauty against any natural beauty, he has tendency to choose natural beauty. So, even if there are beautiful art pieces on the table and expensive light fixtures, we generally ignore it if there are beautiful dense trees, beach etc. outside. I think, we always like to connect with the nature inside our mind even if we need to disconnect from it in our day to day life.
Whenever we visit our friends houses (flats), we start comparing it with ours and aspire to have things which we like. Mostly, everything is about interior elements. Then somehow we come to temporary conclusion which house we like the most. Me too. But, when I return to Auroville and compare it with Pune, that temporary conclusion is failed even if the houses in Auroville do not have any facilities, textured walls, expensive furniture, curtains, cushions, L.C.D. or anything which is present in all our friends houses by default. The only difference which overpowers these parameters is that we are 1000 times more connected to nature. I am almost staying in a forest with minimum needed shelter and privacy.
This gives lot of food to my brain when I think to design and build my own house. Again, this is ONLY 1 parameter and there are hundreds of things in architectural terms which are important for a house. We can discuss them one by one.
