Andhra Pradesh: Hyderabad: Banjara Barons live it up on the hill

by Guest Tue Jul 02, 2013 4:19 pm

ON one of his foreign trips, Hyderabad-based businessman Rajeev Reddy was floored by the elegant charms of a chateau along the French Riviera. The image stayed with him. "Suddenly," he says, "it became an obsession. I decided to build it at home...at any cost." Friends warned him that recreating a French castle in the urban jungle of Hyderabad would be an architectural impossibility. But Reddy, 45, chairman of the Amrutha Group, promoters of the Country Club chain, didn't budge from his magnificent obsession.

The "dramatic landscape" of Hyderabad "encourages people to try interesting things with their homes".

Three years and a lot of money and work later, Reddy's 'desi' medieval castle—complete with moat, drawbridge, turrets and tunnels—nestles imposingly atop the city's Nandagiri hill.

Reddy doesn't disclose the details of the fortune he spent. But he does tell you that he hired a clutch of European architects and a thousand workers who sweated over 8,000 tonnes of specially quarried quartzite stone and other construction material over three years to build his five-floor, 20-room piece of France in Hyderabad. The businessman simply christened it 'Le Chateau' (The Castle). And what a castle it is! There's the period finish—old weather-beaten tiles for the turret roofs and two flaming torches to light up the main door at night. But that's only the period facade. Step inside and the ersatz medieval metamorphoses into the dazzling modern: escalators to take you up and down the floors, five swanky bedrooms, a gym, a squash court, and an 8-ft wide and 50-metre long underground tunnel connecting the gym to the swimming pool. From the perfectly manicured rooftop garden, you also have a bird's eye view of the whole city.

And what you see boggles the mind. From dwellings that resemble anything from faux castles to caves, Hyderabad, the city synonymous with pearls, biriyani and generally good taste, is fast turning into India's fantasy house capital. Have deep pockets and (preferably) foreign inspiration and your fantasy home can come up in no time. So while Reddy's fantasy was triggered off by a French chateau, influence-moulding builder Mohammed Noorulhuq's "labour of love"—a grand mansion under construction—blurs geographical boundaries. The inspiration for the 39-year-old businessman's fantasy mansion came from an impossible diversity of arenas: the grand Casas of the European Renaissance, the Palace of Versailles, Taj Mahal and every other Indian palace. The result: an extravagantly ornate mansion, an architectural potpourri of over a half-a-dozen styles which many architects may frown upon as kitsch.

It was the builder in Noorulhuq that spurred his fantasy home project. "Building is a hobby," he says. "I wanted to give the masons who built our old palaces an opportunity to show off their skills again." For the last six years some 200 workers have been toiling over his yet-to-be-completed Banjara Hills mansion with seven bedrooms, four living rooms and three dining rooms, which Noorulhuq shares with his mother, wife and three children. The masons at work include several of the most highly skilled artisans from across the country—cement carvers from Rajasthan and Bihar building ornate columns and elaborately engraved ceilings; 15 marble-inlay artists from Agra who have spent three years trying to recreate a bit of the Taj chiselling out intricate arches, panels and coffee tables for the house.

The most striking feature of Noorulhuq's fantasy home though is a chocolate coloured inlay dome which towers 30 ft above the sprawling third-floor balcony. The dome was built to accommodate the master bedroom of the house. The interiors overflow with kitsch and artificial flowers. Architecturally, each room is meant to follow a separate theme: from a formal Spanish drawing room with fussy columns and gold-inlaid ceiling to a "Nawabi drawing room" with marble inlay panels and antique chandeliers.A white-and-green marble staircase sweeping through the house is an exact copy of the one that graces the city's Falaknuma Palace. The patterns for the marble inlay floors are copied from different Indian palaces. The exterior too is a visual riot with massive mosaic walls boxing in a landscaped terrace garden, replete with fountains and marble statues.

They say how we live is who we are and it's a fact that all fantasy homes aren't such loud, emphatic statements. In a quiet corner of Banjara Hills, there's a house so unobtrusive that it appears to be sinking into the ground—and is even affectionately known as the 'disappearing house'. When craftsperson Uzramma, 59, built her home, she wanted it to reflect the Deccan culture and blend in with the surroundings. So with the help of her brother-in-law, she built a house that looks like an extension of the massive boulders, which till quite recently dominated the local landscape. Uzramma's house, a regular reinforced cement and concrete structure, has been plastered with a thick gravel and cement combination to give it the effect of a cave dwelling. "As the years go by, the walls tend to get darker and the house begins to look more and more like the rest of the rocks on the compound," she says.

Contrary to expectations, after walking in through the main door (the most noticeable feature of the front facade), you find that instead of stepping into a dark cave you've walked into an airy open plan house with lots of sunlight streaming in from huge French windows overlooking a lush backyard. In keeping with Uzramma's philosophy of living as "naturally" as possible, she has allowed her compound to grow wild. As a result, every monsoon, tall grass tends to swallow up the house and hence the feeling of it appearing to be sinking into the ground. Her efforts at harmonising her home with the Deccan landscape is not that unusual, says leading architect Sudhir Reddy. He says Hyderabad's "dramatic landscape" inspires its people to try and be different. "It's the contour of the land here with its undulating gradients and the presence of huge rocks that encourages people to be innovative, do such interesting things with their homes."

It also helps that land is comparatively cheaper in Hyderabad than other metros. "People in Delhi or Chennai have ten times more money but people here are far more open and that's reflected in their homes too," says Sudhir Reddy. Two years ago when he built his own home on a rocky outcrop with a sweeping view of a wide valley below, he ensured that every room in the double storey bungalow, including bathrooms, overlooked a patch of garden. However, the piece de resistance was a natural cave overlooking the valley in a 30 feet plunge below the garden, which he used as a den cum music room until Vaastu experts advised him to seal it off because of its southwest location.

Incorporating rocks and boulders into homes is a relatively common feature here. The tradition traces its roots to Mehdi Nawab Jung, a visionary and stalwart of pre-independence Hyderabad who's also known to have built the first house in Banjara Hills. When he began building there in 1929, it was considered a dangerous outpost inhabited only by nomads, wild animals and massive inhospitable boulders. Rather than disturb any of the original rocks on his property, the Nawab decided to incorporate them into his dwelling. The villa came to be known as 'Rock House' as most of its walls were made of existing rocks, giving the place the appearance of a sophisticated cave dwelling. The house, which has even inspired Rabindranath Tagore to pen a poem about it, also has a swimming pool scooped into the top of a massive boulder.

Several modern Hyderabad homes, including the ones built by the Nawab's son and daughter-in-law Latif and Ismat Mehdi, the state's former chief secretary Narender Luther and half a dozen others have all tried to keep this tradition alive.Instead of destroying the rocks on their properties, they've used 'boulder imagination' and incorporated them into their homes.

Others go from rocks to on-the-rocks. D. Pratap Reddy, a self-proclaimed bacchanalian, has built a home which has more to do with personal taste than anything else. The gentleman claims his family loves beer so much he decided to build his roof with empty beer bottles. Hence he's had some 10,000 empty beer bottles plastered on to the roof and appropriately named his home Cheers. That's probably yet another toast to a city of homes with unique flavours.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?217149

by Guest Tue Jul 02, 2013 8:47 pm

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Funky-homes/articleshow/22856530.cms

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Andhra Pradesh: Hyderabad: Banjara Barons live it up on the hill

Andhra Pradesh: Hyderabad: Banjara Barons live it up on the hill

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