Shalini Pereira

When the Aggarwals approached SPDA to design their house, they had a very basic brief, which was to create a home that gave one a feel of luxury and elegance, but one that was quite understated and subtle. That was about it- they said they had total faith that we could deliver and they left almost everything else in our hands, which was great. We went with a theme of contemporary style and simplicity where single element would stand out, but that the whole looked effortless and meant to be. Budget was another factor that they wanted to keep in mind- the challenge was to create a space that looked elegant, sophisticated and upscale, without overshooting a budget. One of the main restrictions in this project was that we already had the existing box or skeleton of the house, which had been done by a previous contractor, but had been left incomplete. So we had to sort of work with a set of limitations presented by the existing structure, while at the same time giving a character to the exterior which was originally just a plain box. We set about doing this by creating offsets, protrusions and playing with materials like stone and wood.