Rustic Cabin Behind the Cloister, Sujeewa Karunanayaka Residence

The Rustic Cabin is a minimalist house placed behind the cloister of a perforated brick facade, overlooking its surrounding sensory-rich environment without being in charge but simply touching the poetic rhythm of the space. Located in Mandawala, a quiet hilly precinct in the Gampaha District, Sri Lanka, and surrounded by basins of lush, colorful, and textural paddy fields and isolated boulders and plateaus, nature has provided quite an inspirational and resourceful setting, along with a set of demands. The house fosters a lasting relationship with its existing natural resources by allowing all of its built spaces to fully experience the beautiful, lush, colorful, and textural paddy fields, welcoming ample sunlight and a maximum flow of fresh air from the paddies throughout the day, still affording privacy, rendering the extreme heat and tropical downpours, and converging all of the above within a highly restricted budget. This 1,000-square-foot house surmounts the primary design challenges by providing all necessary spaces the client required: living, dining, a pantry, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a store, a closet space, and an outdoor kitchen with a back verandah and two courtyards. The design set out to be not only energy-efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly but also modest yet exotic, less but more, and contemporary yet simple in order to complement the client's traditional lifestyle and the architect's professional satisfaction.