AMOGHA Architecture

Chandrashilp 2.0

Gulbarga · Completed 2024 · 11,000 sq. ft.

Where it began

A three-pointed star on a tight city plot.

Three points for the father and his two sons. The star softened into folded wings, and every plan, section and detail that followed refined this first drawing.

Chandrashilp 2.0 at night, seen from above: the folded roof, the lit terraces and the sculpted facade

Three family pillars became a three-winged house.

The family asked us for the most signature home in Gulbarga. A father and his two sons are the three pillars of this family, so we began with a three-pointed star. It grew into a folded, butterfly-shaped plan: one wing for private life, one for the family, one to receive guests. The folds shade one another through most of the day.

This is a family that entertains the whole city. Guests arrive into a 33-foot atrium beneath a 21-foot chandelier we designed for it, and close relatives go straight up to the family floor. At night the house glows like a lantern.

11,000sq. ft. built-up

G+3Four levels

33 ftAtrium

The 21-foot chandelier rising through the 33-foot atrium

The double-height living room with its sculpted chandelier and relief panel

The water court

Master bedroom

Nirmala Niwas

Bidar · Completed 2016 · 7,000 sq. ft.

Where it began

Served spaces face the view. Serving spaces stay discreet.

A ceremonial entrance for visitors, a private garden for the family, and two separate lines of movement for guests and staff.

One wall crosses the site and rises as it meets the house.

On one side of the wall, the people who come to meet him are received with dignity. On the other, the family has a private garden of its own. A slim service spine carries the kitchens, stores and staff movement, so the main house can open fully toward the valley.

Our client is a senior public figure who receives dignitaries at home, sometimes several groups at once. He also wanted a calm, single-level home for his son, his daughter-in-law and his grandson. The house is named after his wife, Nirmala. The site falls twenty-five feet to the valley, and Vastu guided the plan, the structure and the landscape.

Passage to the bedrooms

Main entrance

The first-floor family room looking out over the valley

Family room · the valley view

Villa Azure

Virar · Completed March 2020 · 3,200 sq. ft.

Where it began

The first plan, drawn from the plot.

A 110 by 55 foot plot, an access road along one side and a lotus pond on the other. The house took its footprint from these first lines.

Villa Azure, Virar: the front of the completed house at dusk

Eighteen years of saving, and a home that is entirely her own.

The family saved for eighteen years to build this house. She loves to host, so the kitchen and dining sit at the heart of a double-height, skylit core. She asked for frangipani trees and a koi pond, and for her morning coffee beside the lotus pond next door, so we kept that boundary wall low and gave the garden most of the plot.

Today she tells us this is where she feels most at peace, living her life on her own terms. That is the value this project added.

The double-height dining room beneath the mural

Dining beneath the mural

Entrance foyer

Managuli Residence

Sindagi · Completed 2019 · 7,000 sq. ft.

Where it began

Pools of light between public and private life.

Family spaces on one side, the dignitary enclave on the other, and courtyards of light in between, opening toward a green edge.

Managuli Residence at dusk: the long elevation

An inward-looking house organised by pools of light.

The surroundings offered little to look at, so the house looks inward. Courtyards became its landscape. They separate formal reception from family life, carry soft daylight deep into a hundred-foot plan, and lead you, step by step, to the mandir.

She came to us through her father, whose home we had designed. A gynaecologist who runs an Ayurvedic hospital and a teaching college, she was recovering from a long illness and wanted a sanctuary. Some in the family felt the house was too large for one household. We encouraged her to build it for herself.

Years later, she still shares how the house has grown with her family.

The timber-fin passage leading from the living room

Arrival · the timber-fin passage

Family living room

Ambavne Stone Villa

Lonavala · 10,000 sq. ft. · Completing 2027

Under construction · Architectural visualisation

Ambavne Stone Villa: architectural visualisation of the pool deck and the stone wings

Architectural visualisation of the design · the pool deck

Stone walls. Sloping roofs. Deep verandahs.

A plateau at 725 metres in the Western Ghats, forty minutes uphill from Lonavala. An extended family of twenty-five will gather here, under Mangalore-tile roofs and verandahs deep enough to sit out the monsoon.

The walls are basalt, laid by hand. A stone is a stone: when we say stone, we mean stone all the way through. The family who inherits this house will inherit something made to last.

Ambavne Stone Villa: architectural visualisation of the dining deck and the hills beyond

Architectural visualisation of the design · the dining deck

Ram Nilaya

Bulgundi Residence · Bidar · Completed 2019 · 4,000 sq. ft.

A raised, quiet house for three generations of one family.

An orthopaedic surgeon, calm and reflective, building for his wife, his daughter and his mother. The site looks toward the Gurudwara, with a teak plantation next door. We raised the plinth to hold that view and opened a double-height living room toward the teak trees.

A single-flight staircase and an internal bridge connect the bedrooms above with family life below.

The double-height living room seen from the bridge

Living room from the bridge

The double-height living room

The single-flight staircase against a hand-painted mural

The staircase and its mural

Surya Niwas

Biradar Residence · Bidar · Completed 2018 · 4,000 sq. ft.

A house for three generations, under two canted roofs.

A paediatrician and his father built this house together, so that the whole family could finally live under one roof. His parents have their rooms on the ground floor, beside the kitchen and the mandir.

Upstairs, an open terrace extends the master suite, a quiet place of his own. The two roof planes open a clerestory between them, which brings light deep into the house and lets warm air rise and leave.