The restoration of Copper House

THE HOUSE-PEOPLE

A home is willed into existence by people, their personalities, their ambitions, shaped by their tastes, their habits, their fears, their joys, their crises. Once it is born, though, a home has a destiny that is very much its own. Buildings can and ought to outlive people—that is why we build them. As a legacy that can stand beyond birth, and death, something that can exist as a literal mark on the soil, a way of declaring, ‘I was here’. But the life cycle of a home, the spin that begins once it is built into existence, is as unpredictable as human life. Plans made on a drawing board, sketches penned in a Moleskin diary are still vulnerable to the vagaries of time, climate, policies, and a vast number of other ‘unplannables’. Within about five years of completion, Copper House was already besieged by several problems that had been slowly gathering pace. Fierce rains, termites, flooding and the wear and tear of sitting in a tropical environment took such a toll on the building that it was at risk of coming apart at the seams. Given the legacy of Copper House, it is jarring to hear Anissa admit that at one point she considered selling the property because of the “innumerable challenges” of maintaining it.

It is not possible to accurately guesstimate your homeowner personality till you’ve actually borne the pain of planning and creating a home. What seems like a dream can quickly turn into a long-suffering relationship overburdened with tending and problem-solving. For Anissa her home seemed peculiarly vulnerable; the level of damage it sustained over the years forcing her to reconsider that very important question, “What is a home?” Especially a second-home, which is explicitly created for the good times, for rest, for recreation, for nonchalance—at least in theory. In reality, though, most second homes are a lot of work. Located as they are out of the reach of city services and withstood only through the tenacity of human labour, it can become extremely difficult extremely fast. That is, unless the house was created to be simple functioning and light-load. And in theory, Copper House was. In terms of layout at least, it has an abiding sense of practicality, which was clearly pursued by Anissa, as the primary driver on the client’s side. She’d championed to keep the house quite small, so even with the large courtyard, it is within 5,000 sq.ft. The irony though, was that what looked simple and easy to the eye, hid a building system that proved weak and unreliable in Alibaug’s bipolar weather conditions. In photos taken before the restoration of Copper House, parts of the building’s copper crown are tragically covered in tarp. In the material culture of Bombay, tarp is the great leveller, from Antilla to the slums of Dharavi; it has always served as nature’s plasticky messenger: you can’t design for absolute protection, water will do its thing. It will go into places in ways you cannot foretell.

COPPER HOUSE, AGAIN

Anissa particularly relied on the skills of Jeevaram Suthar, who was the senior-most artisan in Studio Mumbai at the time of the construction of Copper House. Jeevaram also remained in Alibaug and founded his own carpentry studio, working on projects with some of the best architects in the country. For several years he helped the Khannas make piecemeal fixes to their house. In 2023, defiant and resolute, the couple decided to embark on a complicated project: the restoration of Copper House. Then it was Jeevaram who recommended the Khannas meet Mumbai-based architect Pooja Shah to explore an architectural recalibration of the home. At the time Pooja was overseeing the construction of Jeevaram’s residence in Alibaug. Anissa says, “Jeevaram had great faith in her abilities, and I had immense trust in Jeevaram because he was my pillar. So, it was his recommendation."

Less than two decades later, when Pooja’s team opened up the metal, hiding under the copper was a multilayered system that had almost disintegrated: a structural wooden frame, laced and covered with ply topped by bitumen sheets, a sandwich of materials serving as a backing for the copper. The copper that was removed couldn’t be reused for the same purpose so it was sold, and the team used fresh sheets. Even though Jaideep had met with Jean Marc again before the restoration, eventually the metal rework was led by Jeevaram and Pooja. They imported the necessary tools from Europe in order to get the crimping done correctly. Every copper detail was then re-engineered to resolve even the most complex folds in a double-lock seam, to ensure greater durability and weatherproofing without altering the architectural expression. Horizontally laid copper sheets on the roof were joined by using a standing seam while vertical sheets covering the outer walls of the building were joined with sleeping seams, maintaining the same facade experience as before. The copper exterior now has a reinforced metal substructure and Pooja put in CP teak wooden slats with a 6 mm gap allowing the building to expand and contract through the cycles of rain and sunlight. All of this hopefully prevents bloating in its future. The angle of the roof increased by eight inches, the overhangs downstairs stretched to 3.5 ft., while every copper-clad window now has a visor or chhajja on them to prevent water from flowing in so easily.

On the ground floor, the CP teak interior is reinforced by an aluminium skeleton within it. Glass panes have been discreetly embedded outside the copper mesh and wooden slats so that a portion of the living room can now be air-conditioned and water cannot make its way in. All the lighting was changed to make the space brighter, particularly keeping the dark monsoon in mind, and electrical and plumbing lines made accessible through ducts. Pooja also effected some layout changes in order to just simplify and align the house’s backend essentials.

One and a half years of work and basically, a house comprehensively reimagined for efficiency. The building that stands today is an intentionally strengthened version of the original, fortified as discreetly as possible from within to maintain the philosophical intent of the design. For Pooja this renovation-restoration project was a process of interpreting certain universal architectural ideas and then finding a way to express it in a language that was true to her practice. It needed instinct as much as strategy. “The originality of the project isn't intended to announce itself. It lies in the way details are resolved, materials are reconsidered, constraints are embraced, and familiar ideas are quietly transformed. The innovation exists beneath the surface—not as a stylistic departure, but as a different way of thinking and making,” she says.