Doing more with less

Sanjay Puri Architects injects warmth into a minimalist Gandhinagar home

26 Mar 2026

Doing more with less is a difficult maxim to follow. Skimp on character or leave too many walls bare, and one begins to veer towards one of Robert Venturi’s (many) witticisms against modernism: “Less is a bore.” This was the precise predicament Ayesha and Nina Puri of Sanjay Puri Architects stood face to face with when designing a 16,000 sq ft home abundant in volume and voids in Hyderabad.

“The initial discussions revolved around maintaining a clean aesthetic while ensuring the space never felt stark or cold,” reminisce Ayesha and Nina. The duo rose to the challenge by playing to the home’s strengths: calibrating sunlight through wooden folding doors and concrete jaalis to soften the home’s modernist facade, sketching in natural materials like wood and stone with a light sleight of hand. Each corner bears a surprise: a pop of orange where you’d least expect it, levels that curve and twist and turn with theatrical abandon, and unexpected material interventions where you’d least expect them. Minimal? Yes. Boring? Anything but!

“The idea was to craft a sanctuary where natural elements like wood, stone and sunlight come together in a language that is clean yet warm, modern yet soulful”

Nina and Ayesha Puri

Calibrated for calm

“The idea was to craft a sanctuary where natural elements like wood, stone and sunlight come together in a language that is clean yet warm, modern yet soulful,” aver Nina and Ayesha. The living room encapsulates this design intent to a tee. Come day, and the wooden folding screens cut sunlight into bite-sized cubes across the room’s expanse. The over-arching colour palette brims with neutrals: sand-hued wood, plenty of white topped off with softly textured greys. Turn around, and a burnt-orange sofa curves in one corner in quiet defiance — one of the many accent pieces that inject life into the interiors.

But vividly-coloured furniture is only the beginning. The home’s penchant for bold design interventions results in several exciting material and form experiments. Think accent walls that sprout inbuilt shelves crafted from the same material, fully-tiled bathrooms where you can’t tell where the floors begin and the walls end, and unexpected material pairings that, against all odds, fit together like a match made in design heaven. Certain to be the uncontested crowd favourite, though, is the spiral staircase that connects all levels of the home in one perfect, monolithic spiral. Rounded square-shaped perforations decorate the wall abutting this circular masterpiece, casting blocks of light against the staircase’s smooth, unadorned surface.

For Ayesha and Nina, though, the most rewarding part of the process lay in crafting the simpler things — such as the family lounge. With a low-slung, modular sofa and custom-designed floating shelves, this cosy nook “ is a perfect reflection of the project’s values: understated, adaptable and welcoming,” they affirm.

The material truth

In minimalist spaces, architectural statements and pops of colour often emerge as definite protagonists. But the true hero of the home, maintain the duo, is the material palette. “We had to be very intentional in layering materials, introducing shelving, and choosing tones that would prevent the space from feeling cold or empty,” explain Nina and Ayesha. On the ground floor, they offset the continuous marble flooring with warm oak veneer. On the upper levels, they pair sandblasted surfaces with steel cladding, gravel inlays with textured cork-panel ceilings, and ochre yellow tiles against smooth grey flooring. It was, as the duo affirm, “a delicate balance between simplicity and warmth — one we had to strike again and again throughout the process.”

Pops of colour follow you around the house, infusing the interiors with a bright burst of energy — right from the circular tangerine canvas sitting in a hallway, to moodier burgundy accents sitting sensuously in the common areas. “The art we used was a combination of bold colours by young artists like Nimrat Narang and Harman Taneja,” elucidate Nina and Ayesha. These punchier bursts of colour are relegated to the common areas, as the bedrooms remain steadfast to more subtly toned artworks by artists at the Kanoria Centre for Arts in Ahmedabad.

The home champions a different side of minimalism — one that revels in keeping you on your toes, breaking away from monotony, and marking each turn with a revelation. Doing more with less has never looked better!