Where the trees come home

It’s hard not to feel deeply wounded when you witness a tree fall to the ground. Aamir and Hameeda Sharma, ardent tree lovers, know the feeling. They still look at the spot near the entrance to their house where once stood a tall tree that yielded the sweetest, succulent mangoes. The benevolent old giant succumbed to nature’s fury last year when heavy rains lashed with stormy gusto across the couple’s 700 sq yard property.

“I still miss that tree. In fact, the main reason we chose this plot was because of the rocky terrain and the abundance of trees all over,” says Hameeda, who led the design and construction of their newly built home. “Initially when we started drawing the plan, we realised that what we were developing could involve an erasure of many of the trees on the property. We then scrapped that plan and started afresh so we could build our house to accommodate the green cover. That’s what we had always wanted — coming back to a home that would be defined by the way it connected the indoors with the outdoors.” The duo’s shared love and respect for nature is like a recurring chorus all around — not just in the spectacular views of the lush foliage from every part of the house, but also in the way they have used 70 percent of the stone excavated from the site as construction material for their 6,000 sq ft home. Early on, the couple decided to follow an adaptive plan — one that would be mutable enough to embrace adjustments, deductions, additions and expansions as work progressed. Eventually, this also meant having to forfeit some cherished design ideas that they had long nurtured.

Early on, the couple decided to follow an adaptive plan — one that would be mutable enough to embrace adjustments, deductions, additions and expansions as work progressed. Eventually, this also meant having to forfeit some cherished design ideas that they had long nurtured. For instance, they could not have a dedicated floor for parking to accommodate Aamir’s sizable fleet of cars, or for that matter a guest room on the ground floor, or a more extravagant drawing room.

“We had scooped out a lot of usable spaces because of our insistence on protecting the trees and establishing the indoor-outdoor connection,” says Hameeda. “Also on the first floor, while the construction was going on, we decided to do away with the lounge so we could have a seamless connection with the courtyard. The sit-out on the upper floor was an afterthought, and was not part of the original plan. A profusion of louvred windows open up the space and also restore privacy when needed. The general colour palette is a study in restraint. “We wanted to work with neutral tones because we had so much green all around and we didn’t want any other colour disturbing that,” says Hameeda. There are a few eccentric elements of sweet whimsy, though, which seem to deliberately ruffle up the earthy aesthetic in carefully orchestrated bits and spurts. For instance, a retro couch in saucy red, with a decidedly ‘50s Art Deco vibe, occupies pride of place in the bar area. The large foxy face in lacquered wood that dominates the vanity room is inspired by the motif of a fox on a clutch purse that Hameeda had picked up from Spain and fell in love with. “I had decided long back that some day I would have that fox on a larger scale somewhere in my dream home.”

The couple’s love for animals surfaces with disarming ubiquity in different elements of art and design — playful animal forms show up as sculptures, storage cabinets, and precious water colour paintings. The donkey Ciuco cabinet in the bar area is almost as adorably huggable as their canine babies Tommy and Bijlee. The dramatic drop and rise of the roof adds an interesting dimension of spaciousness to the whole design The most dramatic feature, though, is the roof of the house which rises and drops in odd slopes and angles. “Again, it was not part of the original plan,” says Aamir. “This was something that came up later when we started putting the elevation together. We played a lot with the angles and slopes to create the drama we wanted. It helped that we had never felt keen on excessive terrace spaces, but we were always enamoured by sloping roofs — especially the Kerala roof style. So, we decided on having the party area covered with the Kerala roof and for the other half of the house, we chose the standard sloping slabs.”

The creative roof design also offers much-needed shade to the lower balconies, besides creating an illusion of space (as the gaze typically travels along the edge of the extended roof). The house is undeniably cosier than what the couple had set out for, but they are happy it still has abundant room for all that they love — greenery, unimpeded space for their pets to wander and frolic, and all the wardrobe space to indulge their boundless passion for art, shoes and clothes. This is what they had longed for. Their home between the trees.