Bungalow - Khandala, India

Set in the serene hill station near Mumbai, India, this was a luxury holiday-home residence for one of our clients. I was fortunate enough to join this project in its early stages, coordinating with an international architecture firm based in Singapore on the concept design.

This later led me to head the entire project, the youngest team member to do so, especially through the execution stage. This 7-bedroom residence was designed to integrate within the existing ecosystem as much as possible. Every design decision prioritised minimal intervention, creating sheltered spaces that let the site's natural beauty take centre stage. Being on a hill station, the design followed the existing contours of the land rather than flattening them, with the house, spa, and gym oriented not just for the best views and natural cooling through the summer months, but around thousands of existing trees, so that not one of them had to be cut.

In the end, not a single tree was lost. Where a few could not be saved in place, they were not felled and forgotten, they were re-translated, given new life elsewhere on the site. It became less a house built on the land, and more a home that grew alongside it.