Prospect & Refuge: House with a Pool

Bahria Town, on the outskirts of Karachi, is an undulating landscape of bare, dusty, parched hills. Two kilometers beyond the grandiose entrance gate off Super Highway, past the first array of flats and townhouses, buildings begin to dwindle. Thereafter, the rugged terrain is civilized by street-light lined tarmac roads but only just. In the empty expanse of desert, nary a dwelling is to be found at present. For as far as the eye can see, the horizontal dominates.

Nested in a valley of this terrain, so that one approaches it winding downwards from a higher level, is a house in dark hues composed of floating planes anchored by free-standing wall planes sliding past each other in a composition that echoes geological formations or a pile of rocks. Horizontal Planes echo the landscape: floating roofs rooted to the earth with heavy grey walls or ponderous podiums and platforms civilizing the bare desert floor. The house is a point marker in a vast expanse of uninhabited, unbuilt topography and at its heart is a pool of water.

The House with a Pool is a family retreat for its owner, a major figure in the construction industry of Pakistan, and his wife and four daughters. Its site is open on three sides with a single north edge abutting another residential plot. Two sides overlook a golf course. This exposure from all sides necessitates addressing each side of the built form as a façade complete unto itself and as a unique aspect of the house. The east façade facing the road becomes the entry plane, the north façade is the garden face and the true “front”, the west façade is the golf course face and the south façade the lake face.

The house is designed to provide a suite for each daughter, three of whom are married. In addition to the private living spaces of the owner and his wife, each daughter has a suite. This contributes to the expansiveness of the house. The suites are configured as fingers that extend out towards the landscape, held together as one by the heart of the house: multi-height lounge and the swimming pool covered with a pergola.

The suites and social spaces face north towards the expansive garden. Protected from the sun due to this orientation, glazed window walls establish a continuity between interior and exterior spaces. As part of the in-between space, the link between home and wilderness, the pool terrace holds together a cascading arrangement of semi-open decks, walkways and gazebos that enmesh the house with the landscaping. This penetration of landscape elements, especially water and sky, helps preserve human scale in a dwelling whose proportions and size (65,000sqft built area) are really that of a mansion.

The master plan divides the site into the house and a rolling garden yet these entities are enmeshed through semi-open and semi covered spaces and terraces that step down to the garden. The site is about 8 feet below road level and rolls towards the lake. By virtue of this topography the entry level or ground floor is the middle level and the basement is really a lower ground level that is open to the garden and looks towards the lake.

The main interior axis of the house is perpendicular (i.e. east-west) to the entry façade, ending in staircases that take the promenade in the vertical dimension both upwards and down. The lounges, breakfast space, dining hall and drawing room with their views to the north and south gardens are lateral to this axis as are the suites. The suites because of their perpendicular orientation to the central axis, are entered via corridors that establish their privacy and sense of remove from the social spaces.

With three major floors of accommodation, the house is animated with intermediate levels to create an interior topography that serves to break scale. The owner’s workspaces take up one wing of the house on an intermediate level between ground and first, overlooking the lake of an adjoining golf course. The owner’s suite is on the ground floor, those of his daughters on the first floor and recreational spaces (home theatre, multi-purpose hall, indoor games and bowling alley) and services at basement or lower ground floor.

Throughout the house, the idea of a prospect taken in from the safety of a refuge is experienced. There are various lookout points some deep within the house, others from the edges and still others from out in the landscape. The natural planning strategy would have been to focus the windows of the house mainly towards the lake to maximise views. However, this would mean opening up glazed surfaces to the intense west Karachi sun. Therefore, the living spaces are oriented away from the sun and towards the sprawling garden and thereafter towards the hills beyond. The garden also establishes a distance between the house and the next plot.

Water is the central organizing element and apart from its functional role as a recreational amenity, it plays a symbolic role also. It exists as a metaphor for life in the desolate context and a reflection of the city that the house is distant from yet belongs to – the City by the Sea.

Project Duration:

Site Area: Approx. 2.5 Acres (108,000 sqft)

Built Area: 65,000 sqft.

Lead Architect: Saifullah Sami Architect (Architecture and Landscape Design, selected Interior Spaces)

Architect’s Design and Supervision Team: Saifullah Sami, Umair Siddiqui, Nuvera Khatri, Raza Aziz, Omer Yousuf, Akhlaq Ahmed, Fareed Ansari, Saima Khan.

Interior Design: Najmi Bilgrami Collaborative Ltd.

Engineering Consultants: Mushtaq & Bilal (Structure), S Mehboob & Co. (Mechanical, Electrical & Pumbing), Synergy (Home Automation), Shalimar Nurseries (Horticulture).

Contractors: Paragon Construction Ltd (Civil), NEC (Electrical), (HVAC)