Nilaya House
A weekend house around a tree
Location
Chhatarpur, New Delhi
Area
5,400 sq ft + courtyards
Duration
22 months
Year
2022
Scope
Interior architecture · Landscape coordination · Joinery · Lighting
The couple spend the working week in a glass apartment in the city and did not want a second version of it. They wanted weight, shade, cross-breeze, and the sound of the house settling in the evening. We worked closely with the landscape team so that the plan and the planting were drawn at the same time — the building holds the old neem at its centre and everything else is arranged to keep that tree in view.
Material palette
- Kota stone, honed
- Lime plaster in three earth tones
- Reclaimed teak columns
- Split cane
- Terracotta jaali
- Unlacquered brass
Verandah — 30m long, reclaimed teak columns, terracotta jaali
The Verandah
The verandah is the real living room. It runs the full south face of the house, deep enough that no direct sun reaches the plaster wall behind it between April and September. Reclaimed teak columns — bought from a dismantled haveli in Shekhawati — set the rhythm.
A terracotta jaali screen closes the west end against the afternoon. The floor is honed Kota, laid loose-jointed so it stays cool underfoot, and the ceiling is lime-washed the colour of the inside of an almond.
The Long Room — living and dining as one 12m volume
The Long Room
Inside, living and dining are a single twelve-metre volume with openings on both long sides, so the breeze crosses the room rather than stopping in it. Furniture is low and mostly built-in: a plastered seating platform, a stone dining table on a single pier, cane-backed chairs made in Bareilly.
Colour is kept to the plaster itself — three earth tones, hand-troweled, changing as the light moves. There is almost no applied decoration; the terrazzo of the floor, poured on site with local marble chips, is the busiest surface in the house.
Show kitchen — muted green joinery; the working kitchen sits behind it
Two Kitchens
As in many Indian homes, there are two kitchens: a working kitchen with a gas range, an exhaust you can actually hear, and a stone sink for the cook; and a quieter show kitchen where the family makes coffee and stands around on Sunday mornings.
The show kitchen is muted green joinery, unlacquered brass tap, and a single slab of Kota as the counter and splashback. The working kitchen behind it is all stone and stainless — designed to be hosed down.
Guest wing — three rooms, each with its own shaded sit-out
The Guest Wing
The three guest rooms are deliberately plain — plaster, a good bed, a cane chair, a deep window reveal used as a seat. Each has a private sit-out screened by planting, so a guest can have their morning tea without meeting anyone.
Wardrobes are freestanding pieces in reclaimed teak rather than built-in, so the rooms can be re-arranged or emptied. The house is designed to hold a full weekend crowd and then go quiet.
Principal bath — opens to a private planted courtyard
The Courtyard Bath
The principal bathroom opens through a full-height sliding screen onto a small courtyard of its own — a frangipani, a stone trough, a patch of sky. The shower is effectively outdoors in the warm months.
Everything is honed stone and lime tadelakt, with a single sheet of antiqued brass behind the basin. No mirror cabinet, no downlights — just the courtyard light and one warm wall fitting.
“The house does the thing we hoped it would. We arrive on Friday wound up and by Saturday afternoon nobody is talking much. The neem gets the credit.”
The client — Nilaya House
Next project
The Kila Apartment
Nizamuddin East, New Delhi · 2024