Jhali House

Household Profile

The primary occupation in the family is fishery.

Site Plan

10 haath by 100 haath

House spans from one street to another and shares a common wall with one adjacent house.

Width of each house is 10 haath

The front of the house opens to the main street from which the room of the eldest son comes first.

The house is linearly arranged with rooms on one side, divided into two sections, connected by a central open courtyard.

The reconstructed section is made of chira and cement, which belong to the elder brothers, while the mud house belongs to the youngest among them. The passage in front of the mud house is comparatively larger than in the new parts of the house.

The courtyard is 5x times the size of the rooms.

Cell like modules that function as private spaces for the now nucleated families are strung along a common passage - Saae connecting the street in the front to the Badi in the back with in-between courts.

Services like the kitchen, thakur ghara, hand pump, open up on the outside and wrap around the external facade.

Spatial Configuration

An evident shift in material has been seen. Plinth mark the boundaries of the spaces and hierarchy in the household.

The flat roof above the newly constructed part of the house enables for further expansion with increasing need of the family.

Section A-A'

Section B-B'

Section C-C'

Section D-D'

Transformation of Houseform

Section B-B'

Prasanna Jhali, a part-time fisherman and a shopkeeper lives in a 70- year old house with his mother, his wife and two brothers with their families. His elder brothers are fishermen. The current house belonged to his dad which is later passed on to his eldest brother. Prasanna owns a general store in partnership with his brother-in-law and goes fishings 2-3 times a week. The fishes include sahal (ସାହାଲା), khoinga, bekata and khuranto.

The house was eventually built in mud. Some parts of it was later reconstructed with chira and cement after the 2019 cyclone. The parts of the house reconstructed included the parts of the eldest brother’s house and the second brother’s house. Prasanna lives in the part made with mud with is wife and his mother. The cost of reconstruction was covered in the Indira Gandhi Awas Yojana.

Oogna (ଅଗଣା) at one end and Baranda (ବାଦୀ) at the other end marks 2 entry points to the house. Saai (ସାଇ ) runs throughout the house which branches into individual bhakraas and opens up into a central courtyard where the Rasoi and a handpump sits. The newly built part with the flat roof aims to get extended with respect to the inctreasing need of the family.

SHOP PLAN

Section X-X'

With street on the front that activates itself in the evenings as fishermen return from the waters and women gather around the Chaura and a Badi that swells, blurring the boundaries of claim extending onto Chilika lake in the back the house sits in a linear fashion flushed between neighbouring houses sharing common walls.