The Holiday Home

A grandfather's brief in a single sentence: build the place where the grandchildren say, “Let's go to Dadu's house.” A weekend home on old factory land, arranged around water, lawn and one remarkable tree.

The client didn't ask for a house for himself — he asked for a destination for his family. The design answers with an L-shaped water body placed to the North-East, as Vastu prescribes, with the living room and den appearing to float above it behind full-height sliding glass. The main entrance crosses the water over a bridge; a timber deck extends the house to the North-West, and the South-West master bedroom opens through a veranda onto a vast lawn.

Upstairs, each room is given a different view to own: one opens to the garden, one frames the water body, and one looks straight into the canopy of an old gulmohar — like living inside the tree. Materials shift room by room — timber floors, Jaisalmer stone, Bharat tile in the lobby — while the roof hides its services entirely: solar panels integrated flush within insulated puff panels, tanks and pumps tucked out of sight behind a crafted spiral stair.

The site's industrial past was kept, not erased. The old factory's kupla — its furnace chimney — stands restored in the South-West corner as a fireplace station, where evenings now gather. From the smoke of industry to the warmth of family: the past reimagined as memory.

“Let's go to Dadu's house… let's go to the Holiday Home.”