DESIGNER HOME, SCANDINAVIAN STYLE
Hubli’s Gandhi Family Builds Unique House Set Among Ponds And Gardens
Rishikesh Bahadur Desai | TNN
Hubli: Could there be a piece of cold and wet Scandinavia in as dry and hot a place as Hubli? Yes, there can be, with a bit of creativity and a sense of aesthetics. A businessman with a taste for the good life, Jyotin Gandhi has converted his house into a Scandinavian mansion in Hubli.
Vedant, the mansion of the Gandhi family, sits on a total area of 90,000 sqft, or two acres. However, the built-up area is just 10% of the total land. The rest is a garden as dense as a jungle. The garden has two ponds, with lotus flowers, ducks and frogs, and a swimming pool.
GREEN BUILDING
“The green belt helps us breathe,’’ says Jyotin Gandhi, who conceived the idea of a “house in the woods’’ and built it. He and his brother run Gandhi Company, which is into granite export. The natural topography of the land has been utilized to ensure there is ample light and air in every room. “This minimizes the use of lights or fans,’’ he said.
FROM HERE AND THERE
Jyotin’s taste is reflected in everything in the house. Be it a howdah converted into a tea table, a terracotta door from Rajasthan, or a centuryold horse cart that has a built-in jewellery box. “I travel a lot and have collected artefacts from all over the globe,’’ he says, pointing to a wall-mounted coffee grinder from Brazil. Gandhi’s grandchildren enjoy a ride on the toy train, that has a live steam engine running on coal. The engine takes an hour to fire.
When Jyotin found the engine in a junk yard, it had stopped working. “I saw that my grandchildren had a toy that looked like a train. But we needed a working model. We found a technician in Pune, who knew a lot about steam engines. He fixed it,’’ he said. He later built bogeys for the children, two circular tracks, a miniature railway station, a model refilling station and two Railway Over Bridges.
CREATIVE COOPERATION
“I am yet to meet a home owner who works with his architect so closely,’’ said architect Vivek Pawar, who lent a hand in the interior decoration of the house. “Gandhi’s tastes are particular. But he does not disrupt your work. He adds to your information base and cooperates in a creative way,’’ he said.
THE GANDHIS
The Gandhis moved to Hubli 150 years ago. The family firm, Gandhi Company, gained so much success that it became a household name here. Jyotin’s grandfather used to export and import material between Burma and British India. He later moved to timber and mining. The family is now into granite export.
WHAT IS SCANDINAVIAN ARCHITECTURE?
The traditional form of architecture in Scandinavian countries, like Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. The houses look like stone castles. They are structures of stone, wood and burnt mud tiles, surrounded by gardens. The allweather mansions have long wind tunnels and towers to flush in cool, fresh air. The houses have wood flooring and roofing. The houses are built on a small piece of a huge site. The rest of the site is a large, natural garden. Apart from handpicked species of plants, the garden has ducks and pigeons that move around the fountains and ponds.
