This Nari Gandhi-designed red-brick house stands above its peers in Alibag

The late architect largely worked without drawings, instead observing the site before making intuitive decisions about where and how to build

Nari Gandhi home in Alibaug

We’re driving through the narrow lanes of Korlai, a fishing village 20 kilometres south of Alibag, in search of a Nari Gandhi house, one of few built by the near-mythical architect—and among even fewer that have survived neglect and the real-estate boom. Arriving at the beach, we turn onto a road that runs along it, and there, half-hidden behind a cluster of other buildings, is the unmistakable peak of a roof that, though dressed in the same clay tiles as its neighbours, stands a metaphorical mile apart, and a head above; not unlike Nari himself, I imagine, for he was a tall man.

Photo Caption: A sinuous frame lifts this Alibag house designed by Nari Gandhi above street level, carving two parking bays below, with the third accommodating a guest room. This portal links the beachside entrance to a private garden behind
Photo Caption: A sinuous frame lifts this Alibag house designed by Nari Gandhi above street level, carving two parking bays below, with the third accommodating a guest room. This portal links the beachside entrance to a private garden behind

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Archways and Buttresses

It’s difficult to describe his work in plain words, yet the allegory here is too apparent to avoid. The house is staged on an elevated platform, a beached boat of brick, with sandstone paving below echoing the beach behind and leading through a ribbed underbelly of archways and flying buttresses, past twin submersible-like bedrooms tucked into the landscape, and onto a sea of lawn at the far end.

Photo Caption: A view of the Alibag house from the driveway. Flying buttresses prop a balcony overlooking the public thoroughfare. Deep overhangs of bracketed coconut wood joists are all that remain of the original thatch roof
Photo Caption: A view of the Alibag house from the driveway. Flying buttresses prop a balcony overlooking the public thoroughfare. Deep overhangs of bracketed coconut wood joists are all that remain of the original thatch roof

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Play of Light

Having passed through this portal, a subtle line of force—evident only as a strip of grass flattened by repeated footsteps— directs movement along a gently modulated slope to the ‘upper’ deck. Framed by soaring segmental arches on either side, this primary space opens to vistas of shores both real and conceived; the filigree of voids that punctuate the masonry screens above produce a play of light from dawn to dusk. From here, one flight of cantilevered stone steps leads up to the crow’s-nest vantage of a wooden loft, while another spirals down to the kitchen, back to the carport and out to the main gate. The self-guided tour is complete.

Photo Caption: A gently ascending series of landscaped terraces lead onto an elevated deck, belying the fact that one has climbed an entire floor. The living and dining spaces housed here open in all directions, commanding views of the gardens and coast from this Alibag house
Photo Caption: A gently ascending series of landscaped terraces lead onto an elevated deck, belying the fact that one has climbed an entire floor. The living and dining spaces housed here open in all directions, commanding views of the gardens and coast from this Alibag house

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Intuitive Design

“When the house was built some 30 years ago, the roof was made of woven coconut thatch, the now repainted bricks were their original colour, and the landscape was sand,” says Ashwin Chari, a young architect who has furthered a not-so-unusual fascination with the master’s work by seeking out his contemporaries for anecdotes and his clients for permission to measure-draw otherwise undocumented projects.

“Nari largely worked without drawings, instead observing the site before making intuitive and spontaneous decisions about where and how to build.” Thereafter the project would proceed more as an exercise in workmanship, with him selecting materials and developing generic details, as if programming the DNA of the design, then leaving the masons to explore these in their own way before returning to further experiment.

Photo Caption: A flight of stairs seems to shed weight as it ascends from the sun-bleached deck, until it’s nothing more than a slab of stone projecting from the adjacent arch, ending in a floating cabin-like daybed room that occupies the highest position of this Alibag house
Photo Caption: A flight of stairs seems to shed weight as it ascends from the sun-bleached deck, until it’s nothing more than a slab of stone projecting from the adjacent arch, ending in a floating cabin-like daybed room that occupies the highest position of this Alibag house

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Unconventional Outcomes

He played with an extensive material palette: burnt brick, stone and wood being favourites, but also metal, bamboo, leather, woven textiles, glass, shells, pebbles and a variety of plasters—approaching each with a curiosity that occasioned unconventional outcomes. At Korlai, he chose regular country bricks for the heavier base, but above he employed hollow, machine-moulded bricks, using their capacity for reinforcement to create forms that seem to defy gravity.

Photo Caption: An arched doorway, panelled in strips of recycled glass, funnels diffused light into the guest room of this Alibag house, while opening to scenes of the village road and the beach beyond. An arch clad in stone-flake stucco breaks the monopoly of brick
Photo Caption: An arched doorway, panelled in strips of recycled glass, funnels diffused light into the guest room of this Alibag house, while opening to scenes of the village road and the beach beyond. An arch clad in stone-flake stucco breaks the monopoly of brick

“Nari’s only other passion was travel. He went all over the country, seeking inspiration and craftsmen to collaborate with,” says Rustom Mehta, the owner of this house, who accompanied him to Bilimora in Gujarat to procure the bricks. The masons were Rajasthani, a team that Nari used regularly after discovering them on a similar foray with Praveen Bhayani, an associate who sometimes sourced supplies for his sites. The house took six years to build, gradually evolving and being layered with elements and finishes.

Photo Caption: Sandstone bleachers rise from the garden onto a large deck, revealing the spectacular expanse of the Arabian Sea. The built-in seats double as a walkway and gradually transform into a few tentative steps and finally a full flight of stair in this Alibag house
Photo Caption: Sandstone bleachers rise from the garden onto a large deck, revealing the spectacular expanse of the Arabian Sea. The built-in seats double as a walkway and gradually transform into a few tentative steps and finally a full flight of stair in this Alibag house

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Seeing the Unseen

In a rare monograph that attempts to present the full extent of Nari’s legacy, the architect and poet H Masud Taj says, “Nari ignored the current mainstream’s ideal of a building as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and built that which could not be envisioned. His buildings occurred as conversations. It was his alchemy and their patient craftsmanship that transmuted base materials into precious stones, architecture into a work of art and the client into a patron.”

His process required a patience that few clients could muster, but those who did returned to him repeatedly, like Sadruddin Daya for whom Nari did five projects, and often became close friends. Stories of what happened with less sensitive clients are the stuff of lore, such as the man whose site was left abandoned with a truckload of tyres and rope—brought there to build a house—when he asked if Nari would be working for free as he did for Daya.

Photo Caption: The view from one of two similarly vaulted bedrooms is focused on the garden outside. A cast of bricks finds expression in various roles: ceiling, floor, bed and ledge. A distinct joint discloses an extension, as does the change in flooring from mosaic tiles to brick
Photo Caption: The view from one of two similarly vaulted bedrooms is focused on the garden outside. A cast of bricks finds expression in various roles: ceiling, floor, bed and ledge. A distinct joint discloses an extension, as does the change in flooring from mosaic tiles to brick

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: An Eccentric Genius

“There were some people who called him eccentric and his buildings impractical,” says Mehta, “but it was not so. He was far ahead of his time.” Born in 1934 to a Parsi family in Bombay, Nariman Dossabhai Gandhi left the Sir JJ College of Architecture in the mid-1950s, without completing the course, and went instead to apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright as a Taliesin Fellow, spending most of his four years there in the gardens, growing the perfect strawberry for Wright, or splitting stones at a nearby quarry, rather than in the drafting hall.

In a rare interview sometime later, he says this was, in essence, no different from building a house, because in either case “you do it from within”. After Wright’s death, Nari went on to study pottery at the Kent State University before returning to India in 1960, where he completed some 20 projects over 30 years until his own tragic death in a car accident while visiting a site.

Photo Caption: The roof of this Alibag house drops dramatically then rises again as a dormer, lending the sunken dining area an intimate scale. A herringbone-patterned ceiling creates an illusion of depth, lightening its extensive surface. The cut-out in the foreground opens onto the kitchen below
Photo Caption: The roof of this Alibag house drops dramatically then rises again as a dormer, lending the sunken dining area an intimate scale. A herringbone-patterned ceiling creates an illusion of depth, lightening its extensive surface. The cut-out in the foreground opens onto the kitchen below

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Prolific Practice

Most of his projects being private residences for wealthy clients, and because he was averse to talking about himself, Nari received little attention from the press. A bachelor and teetotaller, he dressed plainly in white khadi kurta-pyjamas, a Parsi topi and Kolhapuri chappals, and was more likely to be spotted sharing his tiffin with workers on a site than at a glamorous gathering in the city. I scour excerpts and essays and tribute websites, track down people who knew him or knew of him, trying to piece together an image of the man, but the variety of opinions is matched only by the number of sources, and so I safely conclude: the man was a mirror. And this is when his prolific practice begins to make sense.

Photo Caption: A staircase emerging at the intersection of multiple arches shares the spotlight with the rough mandana stone flooring, while an oculus frames its mid-landing. Brass hooks in the soffit are reminders of a swing that once hung here
Photo Caption: A staircase emerging at the intersection of multiple arches shares the spotlight with the rough mandana stone flooring, while an oculus frames its mid-landing. Brass hooks in the soffit are reminders of a swing that once hung here

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Courage in Hand

Organic Architecture, a term coined by Wright to express his philosophy, calls for design that “grows out of the site” and form that is “determined by way of the nature of materials”. Followed truly, even disregarding an architect’s bias, this would result in as many ‘styles’ as there are projects, each a unique reflection of its environment and era. That Nari took this to heart is evident in the ease with which each building inhabits its specific surroundings, as though it always belonged, and he had merely uncovered the possibility.

Photo Caption: Masonry screens punctuated by porthole windows and glass-inlaid apertures suggest a synergy between the coastal context and the thikri work native to Rajasthan, the homeland of the masons who worked on this project. The teakwood ceiling and sandstone floor contribute to the red hue
Photo Caption: Masonry screens punctuated by porthole windows and glass-inlaid apertures suggest a synergy between the coastal context and the thikri work native to Rajasthan, the homeland of the masons who worked on this project. The teakwood ceiling and sandstone floor contribute to the red hue

Nari Gandhi’s Vision: Free From Fears

Perhaps extending a potter’s method to architecture, he balanced external pressures against those of the space to be contained within, himself uncertain of the outcome, to generate fresh forms in which this tension was palpable. Handling such a volatile process requires, in addition to an inherent understanding of material and structure, courage. As Suresh Sethi, another associate and collaborator, says in the 2007 Friends of Kebyar journal dedicated to Nari, ‘to understand his work “you have to be free, free from all fears…”’ May we all be free from all fears.

A half-domical kitchen and bar, tucked into a corner of the building, is largely illuminated by a concealed skylight. A spiral service staircase hidden behind the archway to the right connects the space to the dining room above
Photo Caption: A half-domical kitchen and bar, tucked into a corner of the building, is largely illuminated by a concealed skylight. A spiral service staircase hidden behind the archway to the right connects the space to the dining room above

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