A smaller ancestral home in Gandhinagar had stood on the plot of land for years, set in a sprawling garden shaded by two 50-year-old trees, adored by each member of the family. In many ways, the brief for the new 6,000-square-foot house which was to be built was a request to hold on to that feeling while making space for three generations under one roof. The grandparents needed comfort and ease, the children needed room for their growing ambitions, and everyone wanted an Indian contemporary home with plenty of cross-ventilation and not a single dark or dingy corner, low on maintenance but never bare. And they were also just as clear about what they didn’t want—having lived with Kota stone and Italian marble in their previous homes, they asked for neither, which nudged the architects towards Indian sandstone, inky Kadappa and reclaimed teak.
Under The Old Tree
The dining room opens onto a shaded deck, made for sitting out during the monsoons among the greens. Above the custom console, artist Rutva Joshi’s Mandana sandstone artwork maps the rivers and ghats of India in a scatter of terracotta-hued fragments.
MKG Studio
Sitting on a corner, the site came with two road-facing edges, a harsh sun and a family that valued its privacy. Deciding where the house would open up and where it would close was, the architects admit, the toughest negotiation of all. The way the site sat meant the house had to open up towards the south, the side most exposed to the sun, so tall greens, deep overhangs and slatted pergolas were brought in to soften the heat. Both old trees stood safely in the setback, and they were watered through construction and kept clear of cement. The one by the entrance became the architects’ starting point, and the entire arrival unfolds beneath its canopy. It runs from the custom metal gate up to a porch finished in natural materials, where a black Marquina marble bench made on site sits beside a pivoting timber door with a round handle. “Minimal and natural, with no unnecessary makeup or frolics,” is how they describe the mood.