Harmonizing Functionality in your home

How can one experience harmony in a home rather than strewing about isolated, unrelated objects of furniture and décor?

The RM House, a residential interior project for a young couple and their parents, is an apartment in one of many high-rise towers in a gated building complex in Mumbai. The RM House began with an enquiry in harmonizing functionality in a home. How could one experience functionality through harmony rather than strewing about isolated, unrelated objects of furniture and décor? How could creating a sense of harmony in the interior environment lead to a calming and relaxing experience for the users after having been caught in chaotic, urban over-stimulations through their workday?

These enquiries began in response to the client brief and pre-existing site conditions. The 1100sq ft apartment in one of six high rise towers had structural walls that separated the entire floor plan into predetermined uses as prescribed by the developers. Our goal was to ensure the clients’ needs were met while reinterpreting the spatial experience that was rigidly structured. The clients desired a space that was easy to live in. Our interpretation was to create a space that didn’t impose itself on them but rather augmented their intrinsic behaviors and unique ways of living.

The RM house was imagined as a volume of space being carved out to incorporate fragmented pockets of functionality. This operation allowed for integrating functionality at varied scales across the house. Nooks, corners and cutaway spaces offered reading spaces and day beds or spaces that held magazines, planters or other everyday things. Often alternating between integration and fragmentations, new forms of functionality emerged as in the case of the ‘thaal’ storage combined with the dining bench seating area. (A thaal is essentially a large, 4 feet diameter platter out of which the family dines together.)

The guest bed is integrated with the study table to allow for hybrid use. The wardrobe on the other hand, is fragmented into layers to not make it feel too overwhelming in the master bedroom. The parent’s bedroom had smaller pockets that held either light or became shelf spaces or even bedside niches. In this way, the same design system morphed and transformed in expression and rhythm to allow for functionality.

The boundary between the walls, furniture and objects is blurred as one bleeds into the other, cohesively integrated with a unifying design language. The material language offered a warm authenticity, towards which the clients immediately felt a sense of comfort and ease in, transforming the rigid apartment house into their ‘home’ in harmony.

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