Poetry Slam: A 15,000 sq. ft. Rajasthan Home Recites Verses on Sustainability Tucked in its Stone Walls

Poetry’s tactile vestiges can be traced to the earliest practice of inscribed oeuvres, which either voiced accounts or uttered feelings. To this day, it clutches the throne, pulling out the composer’s deepest darkest secrets and emotions. Correspondingly, on the seams, Christine Stewart-Nuñez’s 2021 book ‘The Poet and the Architect,’ bears witness to a love story, a generic premise that guides the flow of poems. While, the mention of planes, grids, rings, and circles coerces a conscientious psychoanalysis to grasp the composer's genius.

In the 15,000 sq. ft. home Ananda- Poetry in Stone, too, walls recite verses dexterously composed for its paramour - nature - by Shreya Srivastava of Studio Shunya. With an earthy vibe, natural material assembly, and passive cooling techniques, this home carries an eco-conscious roof that glimmers under the harsh sun of Rajasthan.

“Poetry... it is a language in which someone expresses their feelings and I feel the stone here is expressing the entire identity of the house,” asserts Shreya Srivastava of Studio Shunya.

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In the Endless Fields

In the arcadian backdrop of Bhilwara, Rumi’s verses ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.’ come alive. The colossal pastoral fields surround a family’s first home, while conspiring a meet-cute with another farmhouse, affectionately nicknamed Ananda - Poetry in Stone. This farmstead’s life goals include providing a tranquil sanctuary for leisure, entertaining guests for soirées, and decelerating the pace of its residents and visitors while respecting the natural countryside backdrop. In reverence of the environment, the clients cherry-picked a custodian, Shreya Studio Shunya, who handcrafted poetry to express her obsession with nature and tucked it into the assembly’s crevices.

“When we started this project, we were in this thought process that we would do mud construction, and then as soon as I reached the site, I saw an abundance of stone,” Shreya reminisces. She adds, “That’s when I decided that we would go for a stone house. I didn’t want us to construct something that would be overpowering, and hence the usage of stone.” Akin to poetry that hides oodles of passion between the verses, a robust-looking yet easy-going stone structure plans to leave a zero-carbon footprint behind. “The clients were very sure that they wanted a Vaastu-compliant home,” Shreya reveals, illuminating the expedition toward the home. A straightforward driveway, shielded by slender planters on either side, leads to a platform that parlays as a viewpoint, offering glimpses of an extruded porch that transports one into poetry.

Between the Verses of Poetry

On hopscotching over the stepping stones laid on an enormous, squashy lawn, a series of wide-treaded stairs neatly tucked between a raised garden offers glimpses of a porch. A pitched roof and random rubble stone masonry unfold, borrowing references from the Spanish revival style to guide the resident to a retreat. “(There are) almost two foyers; one is an open foyer and the other is a semi-open foyer,” Shreya explains. The porch, serving as an alfresco foyer, features circular openings on both sides fostering cross-ventilation, a necessity for the hot regions. A traditional carved wooden door screens a mélange of elements, such as a carved wooden console, checkered flooring, and a wooden-framed mirror, that suit the imperial charms of a previous lifetime.

“Because we are at a place which is mostly hot and dry, so we decided to go for a courtyard planning… (so) we have our building all around,” Shreya reasons. On escaping the sung foyer’s antique charm, an open-to-sky courtyard embellished with a swimming pool recaps one of the clandestine, laid-back lives of the dominion away from the proletarians’ piercing gaze. Instead of a living area, Shreya reveals, “the first thing that you’ll look at is the swimming pool and the second thing is a tree,” wafting a congenial vibe from the pool’s other side. The sudden burst of light, coalesced with cerulean and a cooling waft, intoxicates the residents and visitors with an air of tranquillity. “Because there is so much heat passing around in the area, we decided to give punctures (in-between spaces, on the four sides of the pool) of air in the middle,” Shreya explains the passive cooling technique. She adds, “As soon as this air comes in contact with the water, the water absorbs the heat, it evaporates, thus... (this) helps us in keeping the courtyard cool.” Corralling the courtyard is a chequered flooring corridor that leads to the living spaces and the wind tunnels, which feature rounded walls to augment the passive cooling, creating a funnel effect.

Stanzas of Living Spaces

The snug entry credits the living areas on either side for its cozy character, with a feature stone wall that seems to tuck in vestiges of poetry in its crevices, crafted by the local masons. “Why I was saying that it is poetry in stone, is because ...you have to cut in the right shape so that,” Shreya explains. She further adds, “it looks like it’s a random rubble, but the masons are actually picking up each stone and placing it in the right way.” Caressing its barbed surface, one reaches the publicly accessible space that houses the living, bar, and dining areas, resembling a stanza of the poem. With pallid lime-plastered walls, hues of the Rajasthan skies, and motifs borrowed from the bygone regal era, this L-shaped space lounges while keeping an eye out onto the courtyard. On the other side of the entry is a home theatre and a series of artsy bedrooms to emulate every individual’s preference. “Every room in this house has a very different interior or vibe for it because (it depends on) how every person living in their room wants their room to be like,” Shreya reveals. The master bedroom features a cabin-core vibe with haughty walls, mahogany furniture, and granite accents, while the daughter’s bedroom has a cottage-core vibe with sunny hues, white-painted furniture, and white-painted feature walls.

Stones sourced from a town 90 km away from Bhilwara cast the slabs for a floating staircase that seems suspended in time. “We have a city called Bijolia, which is right next to Bhilwara, where we get these Bijolia stones. As soon as I saw these stones, I thought...that we will do this kind of staircase,” Shreya tells us. While the twisted metal ropes hold the stones in place, a rattan chandelier attempts to caress the checkered flooring. The adjacent wall is swathed with pacifying strokes of a vignette created by Kadam ji, a local artist who has left his verses on the abode’s canvases. Kadam ji reveals, “I generally paint on canvases, and in that, I draw parallels between the relationship of nature and humans.” Overlooking the courtyard, Shreya tells us, “We have only two spaces on the first floor: a store and a pantry and a big hall for hosting parties or a family room.” The corridors of the first floor bask in the cool waft of the courtyard while the residents escape the mundane world, sipping on their coffees.

“You don’t have to put plaster over it or paint anything over it. Whatever it is, it is true to its identity,” Shreya muses about the robustness of stone as a material. Ananda - Poetry in Stone focuses a soft light on the stone while it recites poignant verses of its existence to the bucolic backdrop. While listening to its sonorous rhymes, one question lingers: Can the softness of poetry collide with the robustness of architecture?

To watch the complete home tour, peruse the drawings in detail, and browse additional photographs, visit Buildofy. While there, don’t miss out on the other impressive contemporary homes in Rajasthan and across India.