Contradictions and expressions

How Jay Shah of DR&W revived a half-century old bungalow in Kolkata into an office

11 Sep 2025

There is enough discourse around Kolkata’s grand Neo-Classical architecture. Elaborate sprawling bungalows, dripping with unhindered elan. Mind-numbing beauty at every corner. Despite its age, this 50-year-old family bungalow is not one of them. It stands at a strange crossroad, between aspiration and imagemaking. Now revived as an office by Jay Shah, Principal at DR&W-Design, Research and Workshop, the structure provides an inroad into not just the merit of restoration but a critique of the architectural elitism that determines which buildings are deemed worthy.

The scale of this bungalow is smaller than the celebrated buildings in the city, standing squarely at two storeys. And it’s not as old, only 50 years. These two permutations have produced numerous contradictions in its expression — oversized chatri chajjas, fort-like merlons appearing on parapets, festoons adorning a jharokha and Greco-Roman guttae. It would not be far-fetched to call it kitsch. But who decides what buildings are worth restoring and which ones fall under the hammer? Who decides what we consider beautiful?

“This project is not just a story of adaptive reuse — it is a meditation on continuity”

Jay Shah of DR&W

A CONTINUUM OF MEMORY

Jay, alongside Aditi Karia, approached the 4,000 sq ft project with sensitivity. “This project is not just a story of adaptive reuse — it is a meditation on continuity,” he says. “It shows how buildings can evolve without erasure, how memories can shape modernity, and how sustainability can be emotional as well as environmental.” In doing so, the design neither erased the building’s oddities nor glorified them. Instead, it revealed the palimpsest of its domestic past.

Walls were carefully removed to open up generous co-working and discussion zones. Where partitions once stood, inlaid stone flooring traces their footprint, preserving the memory of the home’s original grid within the new plan. At the heart of the structure, the central staircase, once the vertical spine of the house, was transformed into a wooden amphitheatre. It now anchors the space both symbolically and functionally, hosting meetings, informal celebrations and daily rituals. Strategic openings carved into key walls encourage interaction between levels and draw the surrounding landscape deep into the building’s core.

EMBEDDING IDENTITY

Here, the family’s own history became the blueprint. Long-time collectors and patrons, the family asked for the space to harbour their lineage. South Indian leather puppets, Jain miniature paintings from Rajasthan, heirloom fans and intricately embroidered carpets crafted by the homeowner’s great-grandmother animate the rooms like fragments of living memory. “They served as conversation starters, sources of inspiration, and cultural bridges for a diverse staff,” Jay Shah notes. Their presence resists the sterilised anonymity of corporate offices, grounding the space in intimacy and reverence for the past.

INTO THE NEW

To house future growth, a new wing was perched atop the original terrace. Instead of camouflaging the intervention, the intervention made contrast its currency. Exposed concrete ceilings, bare plastered walls and Kota stone and concrete terrazzo floors mark this wing as deliberately distinct. A salvaged semicircular stained-glass window, once part of the terrace wall, was stitched into the new elevation, creating a glowing seam between eras. Antique furniture and rugs lend it the air of a time capsule, a reflective enclave suspended above the bustle of the main office.

Even the smallest gestures resisted erasure. Old stone floors were retained, broken marble from demolition recast into mosaics and every wooden window was painstakingly removed, restored and reinstalled. Railings were stripped and reinterpreted. New fenestrations slice through the shell, delicate yet assertive, flooding the building with light and air.

“To retain the old and build new is never an easy task,” Jay admits, “however, it is a task that includes meticulous removal and addition, which is a joy in its own.” We live in a strange landscape. Ricochetting between unabashed demolition and stunted preservation, it frames only an aspect of the past as worth our attention. It is refreshing that, once in a while, our gaze falls upon the narratives often forgone in favour of others.