The Scholar’s Suite at The Mayur: Part 6 (Summary)

This is my final post in the series. It is really just a visual summary of the project.

Plan of Suite and Courtyard

Courtyard looking towards front facade (courtesy of Bea Jauregui)

Courtyard looking towards boundary wall (courtesy of Bea Jauregui)

Living Room looking towards entrance

Living room looking towards boundary wall

Bedroom looking towards wall shared with Room 11

Bedroom looking towards bathroom doors

Bathroom looking towards rear exit

Bathroom looking at wall shared with kitchen

Kitchen/dining looking towards rear

Kitchen Cabinetry

The Scholar’s Suite at The Mayur, Lucknow: Part 5 (Details)

This penultimate post on The Scholar’s Suite is all about key details, starting with the front door. The door itself was made of wood reclaimed from the old doors. The door handle was made from an old wood-block used for printing on traditional blockwork textiles with dye. The block was cleaned of all its dyes. To enhance the engraved printing pattern on the block, I dipped the block into a thin layer of paint so just the top surface is painted.

One of the most exciting details I worked on was the design and manufacture of light fixtures. Intended to mimic and exaggerate the shape of a lighbulb, these laser cut fixtures are held together using dowel which can be covered with fabric, paper or left open. They will be available soon from my online store and hopefully in a physical store too.

Playing with geometry, I designed an octagonal mirror that would reflect the colorful square tiles on the opposite side in the bathroom.

Toby Wong’s ‘Sunjars’ dot the courtyard, providing the user with an ‘electricity-free’ form of light in a region where electricity sometimes does unexpectedly go off. Many blogposts ago I wrote about Toby Wong following his untimely death and I am glad I was able to use his ingenious ‘Sunjars’ for this project.

The Scholar’s Suite at The Mayur, Lucknow: Part 4 (Bespoke Furniture)

The Client’s brief to allow more natural light in to the Scholar’s Suite rendered a number of building components redundant, including the existing window grilles and shutters. Many of these items were in good condition and the Contractor was instructed to set them aside. These items were then repurposed for bespoke furniture within the suite and courtyard including the bed, sofa/divan, dining table and swing. The bedhead was composed from an old grille; the sofa/divan frame was fixed on one end to a grille and the other end to a shutter; the dining table top was comprised of two shutters fixed together resting on sewing machine table legs and the swing seat was once a shutter. Below are images of the completed pieces of furniture alongside the repurposed elements in their original form.

Original window grille (left), Bespoke bed (right)

Original window grille (left), Original window shutter (middle), Bespoke sofa/divan (right)

Original window shutter (left), Bespoke dining table (right)

Original window shutter (left), Bespoke swing