Vettaths: The Sunshine House

For Abhirami Murali, a working assignment with Playgroup Studio to design a home for her father to be rented out, became Vettaths, a co-living space that bought people, ideas, and communities together over a shared roof and a collective vibe.

Abhirami Murali calls Vettaths her safe place. Vettaths in Kozhikode, Kerala, is a haven for many as its design makes it a space that is personal yet a community spot all at once. Vettaths is curated in a way to be self-sufficient, private, and personal.

Vettaths in Calicut was initially designed to function as two houses, that could possibly be rented out. But the place had a mind of its own. During the lockdown period and later, it became a place for its owner Abhirami Murali and her friends to congregate and “hangout”. It became a hub attracting people to its folds, because of the flexibility in design that was planned by Playgroup Studio (where Abhirami was working).

“I’ve always had a passion for hospitality and Vettaths gave me a chance to explore that passion. It’s great being able to run this space and meet so many new people,” says Abhirami, the architect, and the creator of the community space.

“This also means we try to limit or minimise the number of people using the space at a time to achieve the desired privacy. Our philosophy is strongly based on conscious living and ideals that are environment friendly and efficient,” says Abhirami who takes on the job of curating the space with effortless grace.

“My aim right now is getting Vettaths to be everyone’s second home and safe space, to build a community and keep growing,” she says.

Hear the story of Vettaths from Abhirami, herself, the creator, and the curator of the space.

SCALE: Was the initial idea to host a community space or just a house for your father with a tenancy option for outsiders?

Abhirami: Yes, when my dad proposed the project to me when I was part of Playgroup Studio, an architecture firm based in Goa, the initial idea was to design a house that could possibly be rented out. It was to be designed as two separate houses on two levels with their entries separated as well. This is also why the house has two kitchens. This works very well now with the co-living set up. Once the construction was done was when my dad had a change of heart and decided to keep the house for himself!

SCALE: How did the community space idea come about?

Abhirami: I guess a lot of how the space came about and evolved was thanks to timing. It was during Covid 2020 that I would use the space to work at for my architecture projects. Since it was lockdown period, all my friends based in Calicut, came back to their hometown. There were days where some of them would use Vettaths to work.

I realised that having people in the space brought so much life to it. We all grew up in our parents’ home and rarely had an external space where we could meet or gather. This became that space and we started using words like ‘community’, and that’s also when I started to gain a sense of it. The house was already by then a co-living / Air BNB space, but this was when co-working came up as an idea too. Due to Covid, a lot of people were working remotely at this point so it made sense too.

SCALE: Have you visited such co-shared spaces before? Was there a prototype to follow for Vettaths?

Abhirami: I don’t think I’ve actually stayed or visited something exactly like this. I have stayed and worked at some travel hostels during my gap year. There was this strong sense of community in the hostel I worked at in Zagreb, Croatia.

The kitchen and dining were the common meeting space, where at the end of the day, everyone would cook communally, share recipes, ingredients, stories, it was where the heart was. I was away from home but I never felt it. The people there felt like family. It was that essence that I wanted to bring to Vettath. I wanted people to have the opportunity to interact and engage. Something that happens so less these days. It was to widen our range of people that we started having various events here.

I realized that would be a way for more people to visit the space, interact and become a part of this community. At that point Kozhikode did not have many safe, inclusive spaces where people could come and interact either.

SCALE: How did your approach to design change while Vettath was being constructed? How difficult was it to become both the designer and the client at the same time?

Abhirami: I think it had its advantages for sure, but it was also a lot more stressful. One challenge we always face working with clients is the fact that we have to find a middle ground when it comes to design, functionality and with regard to style. Sometimes this can end up with the architect compromising a lot and being unable to really put their work out there. In this case, we had complete design freedom. The client was my dad and he was more concerned about us meeting spatial requirements for the residence and finishing the project within the timeline. So unlike other projects, there was no back and forth with plans or designs. Whatever we had decided was final, this meant we had to make sure we considered everything from our side leaving no gaps.

I think when there’s a client involved, especially for a residence, it’s finally their home, and they are bound to notice if something is not as user friendly as they would expect. Here I had to think both about the challenges and tackle them accordingly. I had to take on a lot more responsibility and finance was always the most stressful part for me. I knew I needed it to complete within a certain budget, so every material, finish etc was individually looked at and went through several levels of screening to make sure it was the most cost-effective without compromising the quality. We were able to be a lot more flexible in terms of decision making, and a lot of details would change as the structure was coming along. I feel in some ways we did more justice to the design and building this way. I was also much more involved on site and would be here almost every day for a year to supervise the work.

SCALE: Tell us about the design factors that were kept in mind and how did you want to treat the look and feel of the project.

Abhirami: Our intent was to design a four-bedroom residence in five cents of land, with ample natural light and ventilation, a sense of space and volume, good circulation which also met all our clients’ requirements, in this case my father’s requirement.

The residence was designed to accommodate two independent units, yet be flexible enough to combine as one when required. When we began designing this house conceptually. Significance was given to attaining formal along with structural clarity in the design.

The house was designed as a square plan with a nine-grid layout. The corner squares in the grid were enlarged to house the living spaces and the central grid was reduced to 2 meters bays to house the utilities and services.

The roof was conceived as a large four pitched roof, sliced to a quarter and fitted on to this square plan. The result is a diagonal ridge with one corner raised making it possible to house all floor levels including the water tank under a single roof span. The living spaces are interconnected through double volumes and verandas within the house taking advantage of this roof form.

SCALE: What materials did you finalise on and how did it change with the new purpose?

Abhirami: Some of the materials and techniques adopted for the residence were also a little more experimental for us. Here we stressed on exposing the structure like a framework while using walls, openings etc. as it’s in fills.

All the external masonry walls were erected with exposed brick using a low-cost-construction technique {Ar. Laurie Baker) known as “Rat trap bond”, where the quantity of bricks and mortar is reduced by 25%. A cavity was produced adding to the thermal insulation and additionally helped to conceal electrical wiring. Materials that were finally selected played an important role in reducing the overall cost of the residence.

For the interior finishes, Kadappa stone was used for the flooring and for the openings we used mild steel for the frames and shutters. All the mild steel windows/ openings are a combination of Kadappa, wood, glass and perforated mild steel fixed onto it according to the location and its purpose. The use of wood was minimised and used specifically to achieve certain finishes.

The concrete ceiling was also left exposed but the main skeletal framework was finished in putty and paint. The house overall has a lot of earthy, subdued tones, so to compliment that we used brighter/solid colours for some of the doors, tiling and even soft furnishing. Overall, the main challenge during the construction was achieving the finishes with the use of these materials which were relatively new for the workers on site. Though these were all locally sourced materials, the combinations and techniques which were to be adopted made it more labour intensive and more time consuming, but the result was definitely worth it.

Now that the house is a community/ coliving space, actually the materials chosen were quite ideal. Maintenance can always become an issue with most construction, especially when we have so many different kinds of users. As we exposed the bricks, it’s been 5 years and we haven’t had to do any extra maintenance yet even on the exteriors and it looks brand new.

 SCALE: Now after running the space as a community space, what are your learnings? Will you do anything differently?

Abhirami: That’s a tough one, I’ve learnt so much after running Vettaths, not sure where to start! Architecturally itself I think there are a lot of things I would have done differently now if I were to do this again, though most of the key elements I’d keep the same. I’ve also learnt (over time) to let go of the house and be less affected when things happen to it. This has also helped me distance myself when needed and trust my team when I’m not around as well.

SCALE: Some stories that you can share that happen only in such an open community space.

Abhirami: As a community space, we have just so many exchanges that contribute to this space. It’s almost like there is a life to Vettath and it keeps growing on its own organically with each interaction. Each person who comes here adds a bit of magic to the space. Each person brings a story. Each person is a story.

One of the experiences/stories from earlier days that popped up with this question is about this cute little kitten called Pocket. A lovely couple reached out to us for coliving sometime in 2021 asking if we are pet friendly. They had their house under construction in Wayanad and would come down to Kozhikode every now and then to get supplies. They had this beautiful young cat that they had adopted and they couldn’t travel without her. We had never had pets stay at ours, but because the couple seemed incredibly sweet, we took a chance and said yes.

Pocket was our first animal guest. She was known for sitting on the kitchen counter and staring out the window. She also made sure to explore literally every nook and cranny of Vettath. They would then continue to visit us, always with Pocket. After almost a year, very unfortunately, Pocket lost her life to an accident. All of us were shattered. The beautiful part about it was that the grief of losing Pocket could be shared. Stories about Pocket, her quirks, her weird sleeping positions and so on were told and remembered. We continued loving her. The couple continued visiting Vettaths every once in a while, and our bond grew into something beyond mere guest-host relationship. They became family.

 SCALE: Has your architectural journey taken a back seat now?

Abhirami: As stressful as it may get balancing Vettaths and architecture, I can’t imagine life without the other. For me design is something that is always around me, even when it comes to running Vettaths. I’ve always felt practicing architecture is not something that I can take breaks and come back to. The more I’m in that world, the easier things are when I’m working on projects. It’s very easy to lose touch when I’m not in the field.

Design and architecture are things I’m passionate about, so I generally take on only a few projects at a time though so it doesn’t become too much for me. The balance is a good thing because when one of them becomes too overwhelming or frustrating I have the other to fall back on.

SCALE: Have you been inspired by any architect and how does that reflect in your work and in Vettaths?

Abhirami: Definitely the architects behind Playgroup Studio, Harsh Patel and Bhavana Hameed. I feel whatever I know about architecture and design stemmed from them. They followed very simple and sensible principles which worked.

There is never any fuss or gimmicks in their work, and you can see the kind of passion and drive they have in all of their projects. I learnt so much from them just as humans, and especially in the way they managed Playgroup Studio and the team. It never felt like a typical architecture office, they gave the space to let people grow and really become themselves. And even now when I go back to visit them in Goa it feels like going home.

They are the ones who really taught me the meaning of ‘community’. When I started Vettaths and started building a team and community, many a time I would try to think of how Playgroup would have dealt with certain situations and that has always sort of been my guiding star. Vettaths is nothing without the team, they are the ones who have been shaping and building it into what it is today.

SCALE: The idea behind the names of the rooms?

Abhirami: The rooms have been named after the fruits of the trees we have in this land. This is our way of paying homage to this gorgeous earth for supporting and nourishing us. The names are in our local language Malayalam and are Chakka (jackfruit), Thenga (coconut), Bilimbi and Manga ( mango, which I keep as my room).

Vettath’s FACT FILE:

 Site Area: 0.6 acres (5 cents)

Built-up Area: 2,800 sqft

Project Status: Completed, 2019.

Design Team: Harsh Patel, Abhirami Murali

Project Architect: Abhirami Murali

Structural Design: Baisil Thomas

Project Contractor: Charley Thomas (Thoms group)

Photo Credits: Shijo Thomas