This retreat home in Ahmedabad by Modo Designs dissolves into the landscape

What becomes of a home where its walls don’t stand tall as boundaries? Taking shape instead as transparent contours that dissolve into the rolling green landscape in front, in just a blink of an eye. On the outskirts of Ahmedabad in Racharda, a retreat-home for a native family perched under the open sky answers this architectural sorcery scripted by Arpan Shah of Modo Designs.

“The entire layout is decentralised and one has to traverse the open space to move from one space to another, allowing the user to interact with the natural environment around,” says the principal architect, who imagined the structure with The White Box Designs’ Vishwa Shah for interior planning, associate architect Anupam Choudhary and landscape Rushika Khanna.

Somewhere between reality and utopia, the 3,000 sq ft home contemporary in its appearance is in fact layered with a raw, informal and abundantly nature-forward appeal. Surprisingly, there is no formal entryway to this house. Folding in and out of the terrain, the cantilevered verandah is where one can pass through to enter the living and dining areas.

As Arpan informs, the space is created as an open ground-floor structure extended as a linear organisation. While the front bay envelops the living, dining, powder bathroom and kitchen sections, the rear bay wraps in the bedroom and a pool changing room. An enticing lesson in modern architectural feat, the central protagonist of the retreat home is also the pool that rests serenely beneath the bedroom block raised above it. “Lifting the box above the pool was an interesting challenge to resolve,” mentions Arpan.

As the environment around and the facade in sight meld into each other, what stands out is how the existing trees were retained during the design and now map the open land. Responding to places, people and purpose — Arpan’s ideology revolves around exploring rather than imposing. He says, “We have strived for an honest expression, keeping exposed RCC finish, using natural local materials and avoiding layers of false ceiling or panelling.” 

With restrained simplicity forming its pulse, the house uses natural materials to evidently echo the surrounding landscape. The ochre-hued, textured external walls ground the home in its earthy language, while the ceiling—an interplay of exposed RCC and wood—softens the space with warmth. Inside, terrazzo floors cast on site create a meandering flow, while the leather-finished black granite of the verandah grounds the open spaces.