Terrace Garden at Bandra

Hovering above the concrete jungle of the Bandra neighborhood in Mumbai, ‘The Terrace Garden’ by The White Room studio was built to offer respite from the chaos and clatter of the city, offering obscure views of the Arabian Sea.This 1500 sq ft rooftop was conceived as a pleasure garden where one could watch the sun setting into the sea or the birds flying by or simply relax. The garden is made of organically designed free flowing arched canopy encompassing the whole length of the terrace, the canopy starts from the floor and slowly raises to a level where it becomes the roof for the patio. The canopy framed the open terrace where kids can play, the adults could gather together, soak in the sun or rain, or choose to sit and relax in the verandah shade. The spaces beyond the framed terrace and veranda mostly serve as built in planters for trees or an occasional lily pond. Salinity tolerant and hardy plant varieties like palms, lantanas and wild grass were chosen for easy maintenance.
For building up the free flowing canopy we needed a material which has the plasticity of modelling clay and at the same time is highly elastic and compact. After a lot of investigation we chose ‘ferrocrete’ the long forgotten material to provide a monolithic sculptural form. The structure was then waterproofed using epoxy polymer, and the lawn laid over it.