Kitchen & handpump as a extension

Informal Spatial Claims

Satya akka lives in a small house that accommodates a family of four within a compact arrangement of a single multifunctional room, a kitchen, a toilet, an inner verandah and a verandah that opens into a courtyard. The courtyard is not an appendage but a key working space shaped by everyday use.

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For fishing households, domestic life cannot be confined indoors. Activities such as segregating fish, repairing nets, and storing equipment require space, air, and light. These practices inevitably spill outward. In Satya akka’s house, fish-related storage occupies the edge of the courtyard, subtly extending the house into the open space. There is no wall or fence, but the placement of objects establishes an invisible boundary. What was once an unbounded courtyard acquires a clear perception of who uses the space through everyday routines. 

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Daily work routines shape the occupation of the house. In the morning, when her husband is at sea and her daughters are at school, Satya akka uses the courtyard for fish segregation, turning it into a workspace. By evening, overlapping schedules ensure that someone is almost always present. This constant movement replaces surveillance, making rigid boundaries unnecessary for security. 

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This condition extends beyond the individual house into its immediate context. The adjacent house belongs to relatives who share similar fishing practices and occupational patterns. Here too, the absence of a solid private boundary does not signal vulnerability. Instead, security is delegated to Max, an aggressive guard dog that occupies the space in their absence. On the other side lies a house that is largely empty. Its residents have moved elsewhere, leaving the structure behind as storage for fishing nets. They return only occasionally, briefly reactivating the space to collect or repair their equipment before it falls silent again.

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Together, these houses form a porous domestic landscape, where courtyards serve as workspaces, verandahs as thresholds, and boundaries remain fluid. The built form allows work and home, private and shared, inside and outside to overlap, shaping an architecture defined more by everyday fishing practices than by walls.