k13: lawyer’s office

This extremely tight budgeted & hyper paced interior design project is the residence & office of an advocate. The essential design components of the project are two partitions – one in the office and the other in the residence. Besides segregating space, these spatial elements have a completely different relationship to the two spaces on either of its sides, as though negotiating a space warp.  

A modest 14’x13’6” drawing room forms the entrance to the residence on the ground floor. A 6’x3’6” cutout in the floor of this space, diagonally opposite to the entrance door, afforded headroom over the flight of steps leading to the basement from a vestibule beyond the drawing room. This cutout posed a severe challenge to the layout & use of the drawing room. Leaving the cutouts uncovered would’ve been a breach to the privacy of the space, while a conventional vertical partition would’ve overwhelmed an already constrained space. A stepped partition was conceived as a composition of plinths, unintrusively negotiating the curve of the room above and the staircase below. 

The partition in the office is the primary spatial element that divides the 500 SFt. basement space into the staff area and the boss’ cabin. The only condition provided for the office layout was that the proprietor should face North while seated in their chair, which is skewed at about 45* to the orthogonal walls of the basement. This is the generator of the partition’s form. While a large expanse of ground glass, regularly punctuated with mullions faces the cabin interior, fins protrude at 45* on the otherside of the glass pane, where the partition presents itself as shelves; offering a hinting to the outside about the shewed surprise within the cabin. 

Lighting design is bare: conical lampshades in the staff area and strips in the cabin, both clamped on to exposed conduits of galvanized iron painted red.

The layout of the ceiling conduits as well as flooring laminate take cue from the primary element of the partition: perpendicular to the length of the space in the staff area and skewed in the cabin. 

The vocabulary of red circular pipes is incorporated into the articulation of the lone sofa in the cabin.