This two story housing unit was proposed to build in Hokandara area near Colombo. The Architectural Design was done by Mr:Chathura Perera. The total land area is 9.8 Perches and the total floor area of the house is 3060 square feet. The ground floor is consisted with a single car parking slot and the side road with the dead end could be used for additional ceremonial parking.
In the ground floor 1 bed room with attached bathroom, living room, kitchen, servant's room and toilet are placed. The Architect has taken successful effort to have a more spacious look inside the house. So in the first floor he has designed like two reinforced concrete slab parts connected to each other by a small narrow timber deck which is supported on two Steel "I" beams. In the either sides of that small bridge type arrangement double height spaces were placed. In the first floor master bed room is placed with the nice look of the paddy fields through the side road. another two bed rooms are placed in the rear side of the house with a common bathroom.
the top slab of the parking area has used as the first floor open terrace to the sky with a flower trough. The second floor terrace is used as the larger ceremonial open terrace area. Another third slab is placed to cover the stairs and it is proposed to utilize as the water tank slab.
The structural design is done by Chartered Structural Engineer, Isuru S. Amarasena. He has visited the site initially and looked at the side conditions and the soil conditions. As a hard type kabok soil strata was identified through out the land under 2 feet from the existing soil 3x3, 3.5x3.5 sized pad footings could be used for the substructure. In order to compliance with the Robustness Criteria, 9x9 tie beams were prosed with T12 Diameter reinforcement bars with R6 stirrups at 125mm interval spacing. Rubble foundation with different sizes were proposed for different areas of the house according to the considerable level differences. One blind wall (Blind end) is faced to a existing boundary wall with a longer height of the neighboring land and special attention was given for that side. Separation of two structures and water tightness were taken in to account when designing them. In order to avoid the strap footings which needed a high attention and a high cost, the columns at the blind end are shifted towards the house inside the walls. So no, eccentric footings were used for the constructions. Below are few images taken during the foundation construction stage.
