Sprawled over a whopping 12,500 square feet, this immaculate house, known as ‘The Library House’, is the personal oasis of a power couple - Nikhil Kumar and Lavanya Sankaran. This ecologically sensitive house incorporates vast open spaces in form of a verandah and a garden, and since they’re both avid readers, enough bookshelves to accommodate their ever increasing and highly enviable book collection.

The minimalism, natural light and use of a unique colour palette is what draws us to this house. The Library serves as the anchor to the house - under a 25-foot-high gabled roof with wooden trusses and a bookshelf spanning over 30 feet, the room also provides a great place for other family activities. Enough space has also been delegated to the entertainment centre. The room is separated from the exquisite, yet minimal, verandah, pool deck and garden by massive sliding doors. Western elements have been married with those of the East seamlessly. The house manages to be immensely environmentally conscious by generating most of its own electricity via photovoltaic solar panels, and stores excess rainwater in a large underground sump. Honestly, we really wish we knew the owners so that we could hide from all the impending Diwali noise here!

Words: Rhea Baweja