This apartment in Kolkata is a modern-day Aladdin’s cave

Alok and Tripti Goyal’s home inKolkataisn’t a cave, but it could be. With undulating walls, fairy-chimney-like alcoves, andceilingsthat curve up and down (and up again), nothing about it alludes to its urban coordinates. “The idea was to create a space where one would feel warm and cosy and comfortable,” say Pooja Bihani and Nitin Barchha—the respective founders of Spaces and Design and Studio Humus—who teamed up for the unusual project. As business owners who deal in the manufacture of steel and TMT bars, the Goyals were hoping for a design that obliquely referenced their day-to-day lives—a little hat-tip, so to speak, to their much-loved enterprises. For Bihani and Barchha, there was no obvious answer. But the closest solution, it appeared, lay in experimenting with cement. "It was worth a shot," laughs Bihani. The idea of a cavern was born soon after.

Curvilinear Curiosities

Cave-like the palette might be, but there’s nothing primitive about this Kolkata home. A helical staircase surges up like a larger-than-life Slinky, while colonies of black-and-white birds emblazon the walls, threatening to break free. A short way away, beside the staircase, a powder room occupies a life-size conch that could well have originated in the ocean.

For a home of this scale and signature, the challenges posed were unique. “It was like taking a shot in the dark when we first started,” recalls Bihani. “Being a new medium, challenges in assessing or executing the geometry of the structures arose almost every hour.”

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Concrete Connections

To keep the shell lightweight, Barchha compartmentalised the spaces. “When we did wall-to-ceiling forms, we connected them on all sides so the load was evenly distributed. With double-height areas in some places, it just made sense to connect all the levels and scale down the space,” Barchha recounts, adding that he and Bihani spent day after day figuring out how to make the rooms look seamless, given the restrictions of the structure.

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Luckily, the effort paid off and what resulted was something lunar: bare forms, popcorn finishes, and spherical rooms—and shadows dwelling in the interludes. To keep the palette pared back and the spaces seamless, the designers employed only a handful of materials: namely, microcrete, composite stone, and solid Burma teak. As for the technique, ferrocement was used to form the walls, ceilings, and staircase. “Each spherical space is a ferrocrete shell put inside a cuboid or cubicle such that it is free from peripheral walls,” says Barchha. Bihani adds that this also helps insulate against heat.

The home is an escape in more ways than one. "It’s an escape away from city life, to a simpler time,” says Barchha. “Our predecessors lived in caves for millions of years and associated curvilinear forms with warmth and safety.” Admittedly for the Goyals, not much has changed—all for good reason.

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