Samarpan

The studio's 201st home: four identical builder floors behind a 54-foot stone waterfall wall, and a fourth floor curated in full to show how far one plan can be carried.

Samarpan means dedication: an offering without expectation. After a little over two hundred homes across more than a decade, this building in Sector 13 is where Ar. Dipesh Panghal set out to use everything the studio had learned in a single address. On paper it is a builder floor; the intent was to show that one in India can be art without giving up any of its function.

Four identical floors stand above a stilt floor with a pool: the same bones, the same plan, the same light through the same openings. The façade is 54 feet of vertical stone worked as a waterfall wall, carved with mantras, with water running down it and cove lights at its base after dark. Inside, the plan does the work. A double-height open-to-sky cutout (OTS), thirteen by twenty-one feet, opens the living room upward so the house never feels small. The kitchen, sixteen feet deep, takes the eastern light on its counter first. The master bedroom, fourteen by nineteen feet, tucks into the quietest corner and keeps a private terrace twenty-five feet by eight.

The photographs record the fourth floor, the one the studio curated in full. The foyer is treated as a gallery: a sculptural black armchair and ball ottoman on a patterned rug over marble, lines of gold Devanagari lettering on the wall beside them, and behind them a sliding screen of timber battens that decides what a guest sees first. Drawn one way, it uncovers the pooja, a white arch with a backlit laser-cut Corian panel where the Om appears to float above deity figurines. Drawn the other, it closes the pooja for privacy in prayer and reveals a bar of glass-fronted cabinets over a lit, green-tiled backsplash.

Beyond lies the dining room, meant for everyday life rather than for guests: a grey-veined marble island joined to a paler stone-topped table ringed by houndstooth and grey chairs, under a cluster of raw-crystal pendants on brass, with moulded wall panels and sheer curtains along the window wall. At its far end, beneath the projector and against a charcoal feature wall, a lounge corner holds a curved sofa in taupe, teal and burnt orange and a teal leather swivel chair.

The drawing room sits behind gold-framed glass, so from the dining it reads as a framed picture: a burnt-orange leather sofa flanked by cream boucle seating under a delicate crystal chandelier, and in the corner a black figure sculpture holding a cluster of white globe lights. In a house mostly of cream and wood, the orange refuses to be quiet. The informal lounge is for the days without guests: a cream boucle sectional and an orange boucle sofa against Venetian plaster, which shows its depth when side light falls across it. Nearby, a sitting area of cream tub sofas under a framed art grid looks across to a bar chest wrapped in green canvas and tan leather straps.

The bedrooms are softer, and each takes a different personality. The master has herringbone parquet, a fluted wall panel, a globe-cluster floor lamp and two armchairs in textured fabric and cognac leather by the curtained window. One bedroom pairs teal tufted armchairs with a cabinet painted with a Japanese-style scene; another is more graphic, with a black TV wall above a red-fronted study desk and a cityscape painting; a third is calm, with a cushioned window seat and rounded panels behind the bed. Every piece was chosen individually, to the measure the studio applies everywhere: long-term value over fleeting trends.

“Environments that not only serve daily life but quietly elevate it.”