Chuna & TeakInterior Architecture / Mumbai
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Villa · Alibaug · 2024

Light Well

A weekend house that is empty five days a week and full on the sixth.

A double-height living space opening onto a planted courtyard
Location
Alibaug
Type
Villa
Configuration
Four-bed weekend house
Carpet area
3,200 sq ft
Finish
Bespoke
On site
34 weeks
Completed
2024

Brief

A house for eleven people on a Saturday and nobody on a Wednesday, that does not feel like a hotel either way.

Constraint

Three hours from the studio, coastal salt air, and a monsoon that took eight working weeks out of the programme.

Decisions

  1. 01

    Designed for the empty version first

    Most weekend houses are designed for the full house and feel abandoned the rest of the time. We did it the other way round.

  2. 02

    Coastal-grade or deliberately replaceable

    Salt destroys ordinary hardware in two seasons. Marine-grade where it is fixed, cheap and swappable where it is not.

  3. 03

    One courtyard doing the cooling

    The plan wraps a planted well. It moves air through the house, so the fans run instead of the compressors.

Living room in pale tones with a large plant and low seating
Plate 02The courtyard reads from every ground-floor room
A quiet bedroom with a low bed and muted textiles
Plate 03Bedrooms kept deliberately plain

Before / after

Before — The empty shell on handover, with the one window the whole scheme had to work from
Before
After — The empty shell on handover, with the one window the whole scheme had to work from
After

A weekend house that is empty five days a week and full on the sixth.

Enquiries

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