Farmhouses, weekend homes and residences on land where the view, the slope and the trees decide the plan.
Denkanikottai and the land around it is where people build the house the city would not let them: single-storey, spread out, opening onto its own ground, with hills in at least one direction. It is beautiful land and it is unforgiving of a house that ignores it.
Our work here starts on the site, on foot, usually more than once and at different times of day. Where the house sits, which way it faces and what it turns its back on are decided there, not in the studio.
Working land with a house on it — the relationship between the two planned rather than assumed.
Designed for a house that is sometimes empty: security, low maintenance, and services that survive being switched off.
Levels used as an asset — split floors, terraces and approach worked with the contour instead of against it.
Stays and retreats where the guest experience is the brief.
On open land the single most valuable decision is where the building stands. Fifteen metres in one direction can mean a view, morning sun in the right rooms, and a shorter, cheaper approach road. The same fifteen metres in the other direction can cost you all three. That is why we walk the land before drawing anything.
Remote sites change execution as much as design. Material availability, the local workforce's skills, water for construction, power and the practicality of frequent site visits all shape what should be specified. A detail that is routine in Bangalore can be impossible two hours away, and it is better to know that at drawing stage.
