Dr Shazia House

About Project

Project title: Dr. Shazia’s House
Project type: Single Unit Residence
Project location: F-7, Islamabad
Covered Area: 90 Square yards.
Project Timeline: 2nd quarter 2020

Dr. Shazia’s residence is in one of the posh sectors of Islamabad in the picturesque vicinity of the Margalla Hills. This house, which is essentially a renovation project, needed to be upgraded as per the client’s requirements which mainly included the provision of more spaces to make the house a modern compatible living unit and serve as a future rental property.

The house consists of a living room, kitchen, dining and drawing room, and a guest bed on the ground floor. The first floor consists of three bedrooms with terraces and a study area.

The main design inspiration behind the architectural design process of the house is the Old Tree, known locally as Bishop Wood (Bischofia Javanica), around which the architect was able to extract the unique architectural vocabulary of the site, which was inspired by nature, and ultimately gel it with the built structure. The most striking feature of the house is the use of materiality and its colour palette through which the marriage between the built form and nature has been achieved. The façade is a mixture of two local materials namely ‘Choka’ which is a 6” x 12” burnt tile and ‘Gutka’ which is a thicker clay tile. The integration of both tiles creates a dynamic façade that not only adds a visual depth to the structure but also highlights the intricate texture of the material as well. Moreover, the warm brown and reddish tones of the material also aid in the ‘graceful aging’ of the material, a conscious inspiration behind the selection of the material as well. Metal has also been incorporated as the secondary material in the house, which too has rusted over time and added to the aging visual effect.

The façade is thus able to create a pure and unfiltered relationship between nature and the house itself alongside the interplay of volumes. Nature is still treated as the dominating feature of the house where despite the evocative nature of the material used and their patterns on the exterior, the dialogue between the built space and nature remains consistent.