An Assagao arrival: Rethinking holiday homes

Arches, curves, art installations and a soaring scale, this villa asks you to notice the details!

15 Jun 2026

We borrow from where we exist. This statement could hold true for a myriad of things. In Goa’s ever-evolving neighbourhood of Assagao peppered with lean lanes, decades-old Portuguese villas and picturesque cafes, a home rises, drawing its design traits and routinely visuals from the landscape itself. Dubbed Assa Villa and designed by New Delhi-based Meher Sra Rohatgi of Meher Sra Designs, the three-bedroom holiday home wraps itself in the beauty of slow life, defined by openness, the golden caress of daylight, the consuming touch of materials, the wondrous forms of curves and the simple feeling of being home.

As the boundaries of the villa begin to take shape, a custom-designed door with curved mouldings and a clean arch contouring it, stamps the facade leading indoors. The door’s warm timber glows softly, touched by the sunlight, interrupted by a play of shadows falling onto the curled-up laps of the built-in benches on either side. Well, it isn’t a coincidence that homes in Goa are often designed to first linger at the threshold, marinating the feeling of anticipation to evolve into sights of discovery as you navigate further in.

The living room is styled with cane and metal lighting installations by The Wicker Story, custom-made furniture by Meher Sra Designs, Josmo Studio, Pottery Barn, the client’s vintage pieces, all anchored by a carpet by Neytt, Upholstery by Fabrics S9 Home and cushions by B Form Studio; Photography by Nayan Soni

Rules of retreating

7,500 sq ft is a generous sprawl to work around. Carving out a balance of rooms alongside artworks, murals, colour play and slices of greens, Meher’s design decisions led her to create an encompassing layout — beginning at the entrance foyer, moving into the living room, two passages, a dining room, a kitchen, three guest bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, a master suite packed with its own lounge area, a powder room and a shaded pool pavilion. “Goa itself was a strong point of reference. The openness of the landscape, the beachside informality, the way light moves through tropical spaces, all of these shaped the planning and atmosphere of the villa,” Meher explains, iterating how the local context of one’s surroundings can translate to a distinctive yet familiar language of living.

“Instead of applying a singular design language, each space was allowed to respond to its own conditions, scale, light, and use. The intention was not to create variation for effect, but to allow each room to arrive at its own clarity,” muses Meher.

Layered with furnishings by Meher Sra Designs, art by Jayshree Burman and Vijay Pichumani, accessorised by Rangeela Goa and Muun Home Decor, wall lights by Quattrefoil, accentuate the seamless microconcrete finishes by Kemtex Paints; Photography by Nayan Soni

Around the villa

In the dining room, a hand-painted mural animates the room with a sense of movement and restrained whimsy. Grounding this visual, a fourteen-foot dining table stands hewn from a single slab of wood; an object that feels almost raw and elemental in its presence. Together, the two create a compelling tension between permanence and play set amidst a culinary-forward space.

That interplay between object and atmosphere extends into the bedrooms, too. In the first guest suite, a mural discovered by Meher during her travels became the starting point for its narrative. Beyond decoration, the artwork accentuates the room’s height, drawing the gaze upward and lending it a heightened scale. Elsewhere, the architecture takes a more assertive turn where a centrally positioned bed reorganises the second bedroom, establishing a unique spatial hierarchy. Exposed brick surfaces and a black-and-white palette introduce a graphic dynamism that convincingly departs from the villa’s otherwise tropical vivacity.

“The broader challenge across the villa was maintaining a coherent spatial grammar while allowing every room to hold its own identity. The work was in ensuring that the underlying language, curves, materiality, proportions, and detailing, ran consistently through the house without the interiors ever feeling repetitive,” avers Meher.

With a grid-like wood-panelled backdrop, the space features furniture by Meher Sra Designs, Josmo Studio, and Pottery Barn, along with the client’s vintage pieces, carpet by Neytt and upholstery by Fabrics S9 Home; Photography by Nayan Soni

The master bedroom is defined by warmer, wood-led tones, with furniture by Meher Sra Designs, coffee table and lamps by Pottery Barn and carpet by Neytt; Photography by Nayan Soni

Floors, first!

The ground underfoot as you saunter around the villa not only guides movement but punctuates pitstops of pauses. Of the two, one passage rests blanketed with a high-contrast composition of Indian stone. Tread further, the al-fresco yet shaded pool pavilion is ornamented with layers of hand-laid pebble mosaic flooring in ivory and mustard. As Meher states, “It is treated not as a background layer but as an active design tool.”

On a material pursuit

Far from relying on a decorative vocabulary, Meher turned to finishes that respond intuitively to Goa’s coastal climate. “Materials like wood, cane and natural fabrics were chosen for their ability to age well on the Goa coast. They absorb the salt air and develop a patina over time,” she explains.

This is where microconcrete emerges as a recurring thread, moving across floors, walls and ceilings to elicit a sense of continuity that feels almost monolithic. As one gets around the home’s expanse, through tall arches, glass windows and sun-dappled passages, the canvas becomes less about surface treatments and more about atmosphere itself — where a steady dissolution of boundaries allows scale and texture to take precedence. Materiality takes precedence in the double-height living room as well, where a grid-like panelled backdrop reflects cues of tactility, while a vertical light installation draws the eye upward, accentuating the room’s soaring proportions, transforming height into a feature rather than a spatial fact.

Take a turn out to the passage, a massive, custom installation by Wicker Story — woven from cane and metal — stands sculpturally as art as well as a spatial screen, filtering light, air and sight with finesse. Concealing the staircase behind it, the screen-like installation juggles between enclosure and openness, hinting at the nucleus story of the holiday villa itself that recites how design can both be an intervention and an architectural act of belonging.