The Incredible Wooden Masterpiece of Srilanka
Standing in the Most Impossible Place…
This multi functional wooden bungalow is technically designed to preserve coolness. And to make our jaws drop, obviously! It is not only a complicated structural feat, but it’s also simultaneously the perfect getaway close to nature. It’s not wrong at all to call it a ‘Treetop Home.’
The bungalow serves to be a place where the client, a young entrepreneur, can oversee the functioning of the estate periodically and also as a get‐away for him, his family and friends. The client also wanted the flexibility to be able to rent out the bungalow to accommodate a clientele seeking to escape the busy life of the city, a place that would allow quiet rest. The brief of this compact 120 square meter bungalow was formulated primarily to cater to this factor of ‘rest’ and thus included only three bedrooms with attached baths and a multi‐functional space with a pantry.
The levels are linked using an almost external stairway, such that the bed rooms can be afforded the maximum privacy envisioned. The form of the building is inspired from the modest “Chena Watch‐Hut”. The simple asymmetric roof, skewed, its structure extending, touching the earth creates a certain imbalance, temporariness to the whole. The structural concept adopts the whole as an element placed on the hill side, rather than one that is embedded into it. The steel supports are the extended lines of the form itself, touching the naturally undulating ground at varying heights in the landscape. The materials used are limited to steel, timber and bamboo tats attempting to keep the lines thin as possible imbuing it with a sense of ‘flimsiness’.
