Home for three generations

From the moment they decided to build a house on a wide dusty street lined with eucalyptus trees in Delhi, the teeming city of about 17 million people, Manit and Sonali Rastogi knew it would have to meet the needs of not only six different people, but three different generations.

Multigenerational households were once quite common in India, but the tradition has faded somewhat among the upper class as the country has modernised, especially in families concerned about the messy squabbles that might arise over varying lifestyles.

But the Rastogis, the co-founders of the architectural firm Morphogenesis, wanted to mix the best of both worlds — maintaining their independence and a degree of privacy while having their children, ages 12 and 15, grow up around their grandparents.

The three generations of Rastogis — the couple, their children and Rastogi’s parents — now live in a 15,594-square-foot house on three levels in Panchsheel Park, a well-heeled neighborhood of South Delhi. The building, which has a facade of limestone and Ipe wood, cost about $620,000 to build and was completed in December 2006.

The Rastogis say the living arrangement satisfies their needs. “Everybody really does need to have a space of their own and needs to interact at leisure and not just be in each other’s face the whole time,” said Rastogi, 43.

The couple designed the house to accommodate the three generations. As the grandparents, ages 72 and 68, become unable to climb the stairs, the house design will adapt to those needs. And while their young children enjoy having a small terrace next to their adjoining bedrooms — so they can spy on each other — they will likely demand more privacy in a few years. “This is our laboratory,” said Rastogi, 41. “And we’re living in our experiment.”

The Rastogis set out to design a home that would have shared intergenerational spaces like the family room, kitchen and dining areas, but also places to retreat when family members needed privacy. Then there are the shortcuts for the children — the wood-and-steel spiral staircase that quickly brings them down to their grandparents’ quarters on the lower level.

“The children form the link between the two generations most efficiently,” Rastogi said. “We realise that over a period of time, generations will age, so we have ensured that there is a direct quick shortcut method for the parents also to come up whenever they want.”

The house is entered through a huge black wrought iron gate, which is manned around the clock by a security guard. The house opens up into a foyer, which, in turn, leads to the kitchen and the rest of the house, including an indoor garden.

The house, which they have fondly named N85 after its address, took 18 months to build. The couple also designed the building to house their architectural firm, which is attached to the home but reached through a separate entrance. Rastogi said the couple is always in design mode and multitasking, and it was important for their house to reflect that concept.

“We were just not able to do all the multiplicity of things from where we were before,” he said. There are a couple of private pathways from their home to their busy ground-floor office, which is visited by as many as 100 people each day.

The house gets ample sunlight from its many large windows.  But the ceiling is also dotted with circular skylights, which track the sun’s movement at different times of the day and focus the beam on an internal garden so that it gets sun naturally. And if they are in the mood for wide open sky, there is always the rooftop swimming pool, which attracts a wide range of wildlife — parrots, peacocks, monkeys and bats. “The bats play a game on the pool at twilight, coming and just touching the water and swooping off back into the air,” Rastogi said. “My son loves it.”