Afloat in Hyderabad

This home by 23DDS blurs wild grass, skylights and an indoor pool together

03 Jan 2026

If a house never actually touches the ground, does it still belong there? This home created by 23 Degrees Design Shift, appears suspended above a body of water that ripples around the 14,530 sq ft space. The brief for Principal Architects Srikanth Reddy and Neelesh Kumar was to create a weekend home for brothers Nitin and Sachin Agarwal’s family and using the concept of a floating home, this space was formed where three generations could retreat and reunite.

Located in Muchintal on the southern edge of Hyderabad, Antriya, the home is aware that anticipation is the finest luxury. A curving driveway hides and hints, stone walls direct without dictating and clerestory windows float above deep overhangs like quiet, watchful eyes. With four rooms on the ground floor, the home rises lightly into a second level with just one room above, reinforcing its floating calm.

“Having lived in plush city homes all their life, this weekend home brings the user as close as possible to less processed form of material”

-Srikanth Reddy and Neelesh Kumar

Antriya’s living space with a majestic view; Photography by Shamanth Patil

Living on axis

Desert palms reminiscent of Mediterranean travels and lawns pulled 40 feet away to breathe, the residence engages with all the dwellers of nature. As the home opens its doors to varied rooms, the water moat murmurs beneath keeping the wild vegetation and reptiles away. In the same way that sandstone accumulates time, this home accumulates memories. Guided by central axis lines, semi-open verandah and a living pavilion with three Khammam stone walls etched by childhood boundaries, this home reveals multiple spaces with five bedrooms and a pool.

With a smooth indoor-outdoor integration of modern architecture and wild vegetation, the home carves a landscape design with an autobiographical feel to it. As Srikanth Reddy and Neelesh Kumar explain, areas like the grape garden recall Sachin and Nitin’s childhood weekends spent picking fruit with their grandparents, giving the outdoor landscape a personal touch.

A threshold where architecture recedes, allowing stillness to dominate; Photography by Shamanth Patil

A live edge furniture letting landscape participate quietly; Photography by Shamanth Patil

Skylight dreams

Easily mistaken for a sprawling resort, the home continues to justify the illusion with a private pool concealed by northern stone walls, an echo of family summers where everybody could relax without the burden of prying eyes. The open roof, where daylight threads delicately between offsets, makes the sky a guest of honour.

A central axis serves as an invisible genealogy, projecting sightlines to willows whose branches gently bend over the space.Going around this home feels like gliding from one space to another through huge windows and openness of the interior that is almost asking for intimacy with the outdoors. Materiality, natural ventilation and light incorporates three basic design tools: air, earth, light and sky, creating a situation where architecture feels to be of the elements and vibrant.

Dbodhi and Otazen furniture add a rustic look to the open bedroom with a wide outdoor view; Photography by Shamanth Patil

A private swimming pool for all the family members with slate floorings; Photography by Shamanth Patil

Soil and self

In the end, the home earns its name Antriya, a space where one can shed urban anxieties for the quiet open life. What begins as an ATV mud track for the young and a semi-open outdoor kitchen for gatherings becomes a memory-making terrain that involves neutral, light-grey lime plaster dissolving into scrubland.

The aesthetic of the weekend haven involves solid reclaimed teak, jute rugs and curtains and black metal glazing that anchors the space to its Telugu soil. “A space designed using fundamental design tools like lights, air, earth and sky, this very nature of the space makes its user grounded and compassionate with his negotiations with nature.” say the designers, leaving room for silence between the words.

Perhaps this is the quiet triumph of Antriya, not amenities or acreage, but the feeling of dissolving edges, slipping into wind and architecture acting as a shield. Here, one can step away from the city and remember what it means to belong to land, to family, to sky.