A SKYLIGHT RUNNING ALONG THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE BARN-STYLE HALL, LIME PLASTER WALLS MADE BY

HUMAN HANDS, A DRAMATIC GLASS BRIDGE CONNECTING TWO FRAGMENTED SPACES THIS WEEKEND НОМЕ IN THE ROLLING HILLS OF COONOOR BY SOUMITRO GHOSH OF AD100 FIRM MATHEW AND GHOSH ARCHITECTS IS DESIGNED TO AGE AS GRACEFULLY AS THE LANDSCAPE EMBRACING IT.

- ARSHIA DHAR

The conventional definitions of home are tied to ideas of privacy, intimacy, and a kind of exclusivity that allows its inhabitants to mark out a space only for themselves. As a result, the mention of a "community" recedes to the background, when ironically enough, it always takes one to build a home from scratch. So when Soumitro Ghosh of AD100 firm Mathew and Ghosh Architects was entrusted with the task of designing a weekend home in 2017 amid the rolling tea hills of Coonoor for a Bengaluru-based couple, he pondered over these polarities while attempting to reconcile them in praxis.

The home completed in 2021belongs to English fiction writer Usha Ananda Krishna and her husband Ram, a retired corporate executive, whose first home in Bengaluru was, in fact, designed by Nisha Mathew Ghosh, the other principal architect at the firm. According to Soumitro, it was a "peculiar challenge of differentiation and continuity" that he was faced with when the project was offered them.