Art House

Designed in close dialogue with clients who are serious patrons of art, Art House begins with a brief of unusual precision: to create a home capable of receiving a substantial collection without slipping into the formality of a gallery or the distance of a museological setting. Set within New Delhi’s Lutyens Bungalow Zone, the project responds to a context marked by considerable planning restrictions, where every architectural decision must negotiate discipline as much as expression. In this setting, planning becomes the primary design act, giving the house its underlying order, character, and sense of restraint.

The residence is organised around two curved planes that hold a large green space at the centre of the composition. Against these are set larger rectilinear volumes, establishing a formal relationship between curvature and solidity, enclosure and release. The resulting architecture feels sculptural, though never theatrical, and measured without becoming austere. Its composure lies in the clarity with which these elements are arranged, allowing the house to read as both spatially deliberate and deeply inhabitable.

This sense of control is reinforced by an envelope treated predominantly in glass. The intention here is not transparency as a stylistic gesture, but a more sustained visual relationship between the house, the landscape, and the artworks within. Generously scaled glazed walls, lit from outside and read against the greenery beyond, create a continuous field in which art, architecture, and garden remain in quiet exchange. The collection is neither isolated nor overemphasised; it is given presence through light, proportion, and atmosphere. What lends the project its particular refinement is the discipline of its restraint. The house is clearly authored, yet it knows when to recede, allowing art, landscape, and daily life to assume their full presence within a setting of unusual poise.