BS BHOOSHAN ARCHITECTS, MYSORE / BANGALORE

Studio Works

B.S. Bhooshan Architects is an award winning firm with offices in Mysore, Bangalore and London. The firm specializes in architecture, planning and research with a niche in Green architecture.  They believe in architecture that uses technology to instigate the use of materials and methods to create designs that responds to globalization within its social context.

1. Bassappa Memorial Hospital, Mysore
2. Eagleton Weekend Home, Bangalore
3. Mahalaxmi Bhavana, Mysore
4. Srinivas Residence, Bangalore

1. Bassappa Memorial Hospital, Mysore

Hospitals are generally regarded as dull exercises is space management, for the brief usually allows only for rooms doubly loaded along long corridors. This project came with much tighter constraints than that. However, features like windows, and articulation in terms the various combinations of materials were utilised to their utmost to attempt a more cheerful hospital.

The choice material for this building was informed both by economics and symbolism of a hospital: designed as an RCC framed structure with external walls of composite granite and stone masonry for the first two floors and of hollow clay blocks for the rest, the structure is almost a no-maintenance one. This becomes pertinent in the context of our cash - strapped economy.

The walls are also used symbolically to reflect the character of the building and the interior spaces. The lower two floors of the building house surgical theaters and other allied spaces, the upper floors containing the convalescing spaces, and this is reflected in the use of solid, reassuring stone in the lower floors and the a light, cheerful terra-cotta blocks in the upper floors.

This project was constructed in a span of ten months without disturbing the existing hospital sharing the same entry.

Client:
Bassappa Memorial Hospital

Design Team:
B.S Bhooshan (conception and development), Shabbir Lehari (detailing, resolution and coordination)

2. Eagleton Weekend Home, Bangalore

This weekend home was an exercise in juxtaposing the opposites. The traditional handcrafted techniques of stonewalls, pillars, lintels as well as handmade flooring is capped by a fabricated steel trussing and new material of ‘galvalium’ sheets.

The geometry of the house creating variety of entrainment spaces as well as for week end stay for the family needed a sculptural roof. The contemporary global technology and material was bent to match the local artisan’s handiwork. The roof has a false ceiling of salvaged packing case pinewood. The floor is of handmade Chettinad tiles.

Client:
M N Dwarakanath

Design Team:
Shajay Bhooshan (concept and development) IA Deepthi (detail and development) Sunil Nayak (detail and development)

3. Mahalaxmi Bhavana, Mysore

Choultry is used variously as a marriage hall, party hall, dormitory, and lodge and recently for exhibitions, sales and even conferences. Increasing commercial demand has resulted in mushrooming of a number of such choultries attracting larger investments in improving the facilities, external and internal finishes, and air conditioned comforts but hardly had the architectural and spatial form of this type of buildings explored.

The brief was usual; maximum possible built space, two halls, (one large and another small to double as dormitory occasionally), a number of rooms, a dining hall and kitchen.
The first design response was to change the usual pattern. The main hall was taken to the first floor with an entry by a ceremonial flight of steps, which will pick up people right from the narrow entrance to the site. The rooms and dorm cum seminar hall was assigned to the ground with separate entries at the road level. The natural fall of the ground towards the rear allowed the kitchen and dining at the lower than road level.

Auditorium space in the highest level allowed us a vigorous form searching exercise. The criteria were thermal comfort, good acoustics, light and airy interior, orientation towards east (a functional requirement for marriages), visual appeal and of course novelty as well as ease of construction using lighter materials.

The plan configured into two intersecting circles along the east west diagonal of the site allowing the largest possible space for auditorium. The space developed as two slightly elliptical cones placed at 30 degrees and 60-degree of axes tilts and intersecting in the middle. This generated a sectional profile conducive to good acoustics. The cones define the space into two sections, one highlighting the front part and stage and the other, the rear and mezzanine. Semantically, it may signify the union of two (boy and girl or two families) or interaction of two segments (panelist and audience). The cones with skylights and vents on top of each also could function as chimneys allowing hot air to rise and thus generate a vertical draft of air. The skylights also will enliven and enhance the lighting and the general ambience. They could also provide interesting ceiling pattern making one to look up towards sky while entering and add to a solemn spatial experience.

The computerized modeling helped the generation of form. Once this is done, the first floor plan was retrofitted to setback conditions and lower plans were generated.

The supporting structure is RCC frame with filler walls. The steel roof of the auditorium siting on an RCC ring beam is made of steel skeletal frame of radial rafters of I sections and tubular ring beams. Over this L angle curve profile was welded. A Space frame truss across the hall supports the cones to intersect. Segments of GI sheets were tap screwed to this form the roof. Two layers of Geofabric stretched over the GI sheets with epoxy waterproofing made the final surface. The flanges of I section skeletal frame supports a false ceiling of pinewood with thermocole providing good acoustics and the thermal insulation.

The main hall has a capacity of 500 in the lower level and 200 in the mezzanine. The Seminar hall can seat 100 while dining space accommodates 200.

Client:
PG Shetty Group

Design Team:
B.S Bhooshan (conception and development), I.A.Deepthi (detail and coordination) Sunil Nayak (detail and coordination), Baburaj (detail and coordination)

4. Srinivas Residence, Bangalore

Planned as upper middle-class layouts two or three decades ago, residential localities like Indranagar in Bangalore, are transforming into higher income neighborhoods, pushing up rents and increasing the built volume and density. This attracts investment which display taste cultures with fanciful elements and exteriors dotting the plots once meant for modest townhouses. In this context, design of residential architecture has to deal with the delineation and mediation between the individual and the community realms or the public and private spaces.

The response was to create a technical solution of space packing. Spaces were structured, plugged and telescoped into one another both vertically and horizontally in five different levels. The entry was taken at 8 feet above road level with flight of steps. A terrace at the entrance serves as an elevated podium for a relaxed watching of street life on lazy Sunday mornings, which is a reinterpretation of the traditional open verandah in the transformed urban melee. The dining opens out into an elevated and landscaped dine out at the rear. The car entry was taken from below the sit out at the road level. The upper levels house the three bedrooms with balconies and large roof top terraces for landscaped roof gardens. With planters every where provided with drip irrigation system the house meant to be covered by greenery in most place.

The spaces were articulated defying the conventional right angle geometry to pack more space in the small volume, where it is required such as the space for bed. The volume flexes itself in three-dimension and also delineates an informal and unconventional spatial experience within a tight urban situation.

With poor clayey soil condition, the structure was designed as an RCC frame. Exterior walls are of stones at lower level and hollow clay blocks at higher level. The final roof is of filler slab using hollow clay hurdi blocks as fillers for reducing heat transfer from the roof.

The exterior form expresses the interior structure of the space flexing itself out of the rigidity frame structure and urban conditions. While trying to free itself from conventions it respects the contexts and picked up appropriate responses to the neighbors reflecting the elements there. The exterior also clearly expresses the characteristics of a house as a collection of individual spaces with peculiarities of their own yet functioning together as a unit.





Client:
Sunita and Balaji

Design Consultants:
B.S Bhooshan (conception and development), Debjyoti Rudra (conception and development),Sunil Nayak (detail and coordination)