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A ‘multigenerational’ weekend home, makes manifest a simple idea, a retreat from urbanity into nature. This primordial need, simple at the surface, is contested by urban conditioning. A typically occurring archetype is the courtyard house or the Wada/ Wadi (move a cluster of splintered spaces around a courtyard). Here, the courtyard house is pulled apart and lengthened to heighten the experience of the site and to let nature flow through the spaces, to enhance porosity that emerges as a kind of swastika plan, with the sleeping and service areas at the extremities, tied together by porous verandas and public areas creating a courtyard/ veranda hybrid that creates diagonal connections between partially enclosed courtyards.
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The house is in continuous and deliberate dialogue with its coastal landscape. Rather than enclose, isolate, or dominate the site, the architecture opens itself—yielding to the terrain, breeze, sun, and vegetation. The spatial arrangement, stretched along a porous swastika plan, allows the site to move through the house via diagonal flows, shaded courtyards, and deep verandas. The plan is responsive, shaped by the monsoon, filtered light, and prevailing winds. The generous, sheltering roofs (Pavilions) intersect with the caves (services/ west bedrooms/ east bedrooms) creating multiple ‘Pivots’, points of concentration where the structure/ scale/ material amplify the sense of pause and transition. The house does not sit on the land; it belongs to it.
Sustainability is deeply embedded in the project’s planning, material logic, and construction techniques. The locally sourced basalt is used for thick walls to provide thermal mass that naturally regulates indoor temperatures, while gabions made from off-cut and waste stone manage water runoff, reduce erosion, and reinforce the natural slope of the site. The design incorporates rainwater harvesting systems to capture and reuse monsoon rains. Shaded verandas, breezy courtyards, and carefully designed roof geometry support passive cooling and ventilation, minimizing reliance on mechanical systems. The roof structure is crafted from structural hardwood partially reinforced with slender steel plates makes the roof, which is then sheathed in double layered clay tiles.
A ‘multigenerational’ weekend home, makes manifest a simple idea, a retreat from urbanity into nature. This primordial need, simple at the surface, is contested by urban conditioning. The shift of scales and conveniences of the ‘Apartment’ can create a trepidation, resistance even to the agrarian archetypes that bring you close to nature, and to the elements. A typically occurring archetype is the courtyard house or the Wada/ Wadi (move a cluster of splintered spaces around a courtyard). The architecture stages a dynamic interplay between the Pavilion and the Cave. The pavilion—open, airy, framed—structures movement and pause through deep roofs. The cave—enclosed, textured, stone—houses the bedrooms and services in shaded thermal zones. “Pivots” emerge at key junctions —zones of architectural intensity where scale, structure, materials overlap to frame thresholds and heighten spatial awareness. The materials and forms are derivatives of the extinct architecture of the region - the memory of scale and material dissolves the building into a Built Landscape. The materials are simple and humble, yet rich in texture and memory and unprocessed or minimally processed. Natural volcanic stone (Basalt) forms large walls, echoing the language of the forts/ temples of the region, waste stones are packed into baskets to form ‘Gabions’. The project’s strength lies in its ability to be both spatially ambitious and materially humble, while resonating with memory, climate, and land.
We wanted a place to gather across generations—away from the noise, yet close to what’s essential. It’s not just rooms, but thresholds, verandas and quiet corners that hold the wind, the sound of rain, and the shifting light that blur the lines of interior and nature. Every pivot, every turn reveals something new, and no two days feel the same. It feels both rooted and expansive—like it’s grown from the ground itself, deeply connected to the land and to the way we live when we’re truly at ease.
MALIK ARCHITECTURE is a 47-year-old design practice based in Mumbai. It is a firm of architects, interior designers and services consultants.
In the last four decades, the firm has designed a number of prestigious projects in India and overseas, several of which have been published and applauded on esteemed platforms. It has won numerous design competitions as well as National and International Awards.
The professional philosophy of providing a comprehensive design solution and harnessing new technologies have resulted in innovative and dynamic solutions by the firm.
The practice attempts to develop a relevant contemporary syntax of architecture for the Indian sub-continent articulated through architecture as a synthesis of ‘Ecology’ and ‘Spirit’.
Through an ‘ongoing process of ‘Manthan’ or churning, the practice has gleaned from a rich historic, cultural and philosophical past incorporating a process of continuous change and generating a contemporary design idiom.
