Located in the densely packed urban setting of Colombo, the exterior façade of the ‘Urban Envelope’, the dwelling house of Architect Samuel and his family, seamlessly weaves itself with its neighborhood. With the requirement for privacy, security and concealment from the dusty and noisy urban street life of Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, the tall peripheral wall acts as an envelope that contains functional spaces of the residence within it. The play of rubble and white plastered walls to create spaces between materially defined parallel lines sets the design language of this metropolitan dwelling. The apparent hardness of the structure is softened by tropical greenery In symbiotic coexistence with nature, the urban sanctuary is enlivened by the twitter of birds and the skipping of squirrels, which brings the design to blissful contentment.
