TERTTULIA

GA, India

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URRAK

TERTTULIA

GA, India

Firm

OTHERWORLDS

Type

Hospitality + Sport › Restaurant

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2023

SIZE

5000 sqft - 10,000 sqft

BUDGET

$50K - 100K

Tertulia Concept Note/OTHERWORLDS

How we got the project

The client Mrs Keni was in possession of a house named Rupali built in the 1980s, in Panjim,
North Goa, India. She did not know what to do with the house until she met restaurateur
Imrun sometime last year in february, who along with a few others decided to repurpose the
house into a bar and restaurant.
That’s how they approached us and got us on board as the architecture firm to design and
execute the project. Over the course of the next few months, Rupali was turned into a
functioning restaurant named Terttulia.

Ideas
The Balcao, Goa’s beloved porch

The Balcao is an outdoor porch found in most Goan homes to this day, characterised by thick
curved walls with seats built onto its sides, finished in bright colored hand casted concrete. It
is a welcome gesture of the house where it gently invites you within. The balcao is a crucial
part of a Goan home as this is where one spends most of their time, casually relaxing and
napping in the afternoons, reading a book, writing , having the morning tea or even chatting
with the neighbour or a passers by, it holds space for many such activities. At a time of
modern architecture and rampant urbanisation, all houses tend to become very self
contained, private and detached, separated away from the city or the neighbourhood. The
balcao becomes all the more important at such a time as it is built with the idea reinforcing
the kinship between the house and the neighbourhood.
It is where the indoor meets the outdoor, a place where the boundaries of the exterior and
interiors are blurred. “When we first visited the villa Rupali, one thing we noticed that it did not have a balcao that
welcomed you. The house was an enclosed shell. We naturally wanted to connect the indoor
and outdoor parts of the house and thought it would be best if the bar becomes the bridge for
that connection in the form of a balcao.”, Arko, Founder and Principal architect, Otherworlds.
The entire restaurant would then grow out from the bar, extending outdoors making further
enclosures, embodying the notion of the balcao. We thereby imagined the restaurant to be an
extension to the house and while being part of it, would also feel like a part of the city.

The Bar

Some of the external walls of the Rupali house were broken down and opened up to create
space for an outdoor porch where an island bar was inserted, almost as if it’s hugging the
house. An island bar encourages chance encounters and enhances interactivity. The bar
hence doesn't function as a traditional bar where people sit on chairs facing towards a wall
but rather towards each other and also on its side in benches. It curves at one end hugging
the house with a planter that grows both inside and out.
Hovering above the bar is a floating library of assorted liquor and books that turns into a lit
centrepiece chandelier in the night. The whole structure is made in metal and fluted glass and
painted in a light green hue all over. Hung from the external walls of the house, it faces both
outside and inside. The arches of its form are meant to re contextualise the omnipresent
arched windows on the façade of the house. It structure also holds lamps that branch out
from its ends giving light to the benches built along the bar wall. It is here where the white
marble slab that makes the bar top folds down and turns into small tables to form intimate
two seater spaces along the bar.

Organic Dynamism

We were largely influenced by organic forms found in nature and the ephemeral quality of
natural light. Goa being an extensively tropical place, most of everyday life is spent in the
outdoors, within nature. The intention was to create an immersive atmospheric experience
that inspires a feeling of being in a tropical lush outdoor space under an overgrown natural
canopy. Tall slender columns hold an expansive bamboo canopy with vast elliptical openings
(skylights) that allow diffused natural light to filter inside the space, transforming it
throughout the day.
Susegad, derived from the Portuguese word sossegado (quiet), is often viewed as the relaxed
laid back attitude and enjoyment towards life that is seeped into the culture of Goa. This
interplay of light and shadow adds an ethereal quality in the atmosphere creating a calming
presence that evokes the susegad feeling.
Influence of organic forms can also be seen in the design of the lights of the restaurant. Found
perched onto the slim columns, these lamps take inspiration from a leaf as it falls and bends in
two halves. Thin metal sheets were bent to enclose a light sphere and fabricated to sweeping
stems in typical floral fashion. These lights add a sense of whimsy to the entire space.
When in Goa, one likes to be in the outdoors more than the indoors, spending hours sitting
outside in the back garden or in the front balcao, reading, eating, chatting, sleeping, doing
almost everything. “We wanted to mimic this propensity for nature in the goan life to create a
sense of belonging. We knew the restaurant needs to be a submersive experience with a
distinctive mood to create a feeling of presence, well- being and harmony”, Arko.
As the bar becomes the new balcao that the house was missing, it extends outside forming
planters and seating while making further enclosures. The monolithic olive green massing of
the extended balcao is sheltered under a hovering bamboo skin. This bamboo mass sprouts
from its moulded green plinth reaching the full height of the house and gently tapers down.
Dotted throughout the bamboo canopy are vast elliptical skylights, allowing sunlight to filter
through and cast a gentle dappled glow over the outdoor dining area. The surreal
atmospheric presence of these massive ellipses scattered and floating above creates a calming
susegad feeling.
The interplay of light and shadow adds an ethereal quality to the atmosphere, creating a
serene and enchanting setting for the guests to indulge in their culinary journey. These
elliptical openings can also be traced on the floor as their shadow patterns form green and
white marble shapes found immersed in the hand cast bed of green concrete.

Serendipitous moments

“As you enjoy your meal sitting on your balcao bench at the bar under a low hanging leaf
shaped lamp, you meet a friend sitting on the other side waving at you. We wanted to
celebrate these serendipitous encounters that happen everywhere in Goa, owing to its
intimate scale. These are the little moments that make a space memorable and gives it a sense
of belonging.”, Arko.
The outdoor dining space is planned around the existing coconut trees in compound of the
house. It takes the form of meandering walls enclosing concrete cast benches washed in a
gentle green hue. The benches around planters and trees make space for two or more families
or groups who can sit on either side and enjoy a meal while also being encouraged to make a
friend or two.
Tertulia derives its identity from the Catalan word of the same name meaning an enjoyable
and pleasant conversation between friends. Mumbai being a mostly organic city with passive
place making, is a city that fosters this feeling in every part of its urban fabric. Fortunately,
Goa also has a similar sense of community, though it is much more intimate and personal.
As with both places, especially the latter, owing to its intimate scale, people often fortuitously
meet and make new acquaintances and friends everywhere. We wanted to celebrate these
chance encounters by incorporating an open welcoming island bar in the design, while also
adding built in benches close to each other separated by a planter, that encourages incidental
conversations. We believe that these are the little moments that create a sense of belonging
in the space and makes it memorable.

Client’s brief

The clients brief was to create a space that would be a relaxing day bar in the morning but
also turn into a high energy spot for your weekend dancing in the night. We wanted to reimagine their Bombay brand in Goa’s context that would reflect the susegad life in the
outdoors, while also celebrating the soirees of the quintessential goan in the evenings.

Materials and Processes

The palette largely incorporates locally available materials, found in Goa. For instance the
bamboo, which is largely used to built temporary structures along the shoreline, enclosures
which are dismantled during monsoons and then rebuilt. Bamboo adds the idea of
impermanence to the space and creates a sense of organic dynamism.
The green pigmented hand cast concrete floor, largely termed as IPS in the Indian context is
found in most places in the country and is also used to finish the balcao in all Goan homes.
When one adds broken stone chips in this concrete mixture in order to strengthen it and also
aesthetically enhance the appearance, it becomes a material called the terrazzo, in the Indian
context. We strategically used terrazzo to create elliptical forms found within the green bed,
on the floor and in some places on the walls. While also innovating on the process by adding
randomly broken larger pieces of green and white marble slabs in an irregular arrangement
within the elliptical shape. These incidental shapes found in the space are reminiscent of the
shadows of the vast elliptical openings in the bamboo canopy. Aimlessly scattered all over,
they are found on the floor, partly on the wall in some places and even on steps.
Terrazzo and ips both being handmade materials, come with their own imperfections and
gradually age over time. These imperfections give the material, an appearance of sculpted
character and also a sense organic dynamism that we intended to achieve through the design.
The wood used in the project comes from the state tree Matti. The wood is coarse, fairly
straight grained, dull to somewhat lustrous without any smell or taste. This economical
hardwood varies from light brown to dark brown and brownish black while being figured with
darker streaks.
Early in the process, we decided to adhere to a handful of materials and colors for the project.
This was to keep the overall aesthetic, minimal in order to create a calming experience. The
green also recalls for the tropical outdoors and inspires feelings of affection and care.
The brand association with green and white tones has also been an important factor for
choosing the specific palette. Tertulia identifies itself as an eclectic tropical bar and
restaurant that engages its visitors with its gentle and welcoming vibe with a sense of
belonging.
The green had to be a very subtle green, not too green but also not a faded dull shade. At the
same time it had to complement the wood, bamboo and the denser metallic shades. The
terrazzo work was executed in collaboration with local workshop studio, Jyamiti and Sea.
The colours were obtained by playing around with a mixture of white cement, grey cement
and green oxide pigment.We created samples with varying proportions of these three
materials to get different shades of green. The tricky bit with coloured concrete is achieving
the exact shade of colour. Cause once the cement sets and is polished, the result is quite
different from the initial wet mix of the cement. This means that a better understanding is
needed to identify how a wet cement mixture needs to look in terms of its colour to
eventually arrive at the final colour when it’s set and polished. The setting and polishing takes
about two days each so overall the process being intuitive was lengthy and required a lot of
patience.
Everything in the space has been custom designed and manufactured by local craftsmen and
contractors from the lights to the wooden and metal chairs. All the slender bamboos are
carefully handpicked, locally sourced from Goa and were fixed under the roof to make the
floating bamboo skin.

Project type: Bar/Restaurant, FNB, Commercial – ADAPTIVE REUSE
Location: Panjim, Goa
Size: 6200 sqft
Photographer: Suryan and Dang
Contractor teams: Civil- Rajeev Srinivasan Consultants, Flooring- Jyamiti and Sea, Fabrication- Vikra
Enterprises
Completion Date: 2023

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TERTTULIA

GA, India

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URRAK

TERTTULIA

GA, India

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