Hillside Villa — Architect Earthmakers

Architect Earthmakers / Work / 04

04Residential

Mohali

A timber-clad upper storey held clear of a glazed ground floor, so the house reads as one solid volume resting on light.

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Typology

Residential

Status

Built

Media

Visualisation

Hillside VillaResidentialMohali2024Architect EarthmakersHillside VillaResidentialMohali2024Architect EarthmakersHillside VillaResidentialMohali2024Architect EarthmakersHillside VillaResidentialMohali2024Architect Earthmakers

A-01Record

The record

Hillside Villa

01Year: 2024
02Area: 420 m²
03Status: Built
04Role: Architecture and interiors

A-01.1What it has

01Passenger lift to all three levels
02Covered parking for three cars
0318 m lap pool
04Courtyard water feature
05Solar hot water
06Rainwater harvesting

The house is organised around a single move: lift the private rooms into one closed volume, and leave the ground floor almost entirely open. Everything else — where the courts fall, how the screens run, which walls are stone — follows from keeping that separation legible from every approach.

Approach

The drive arrives at the short end of the building, where the cantilever is deepest. The upper volume oversails far enough to cover the entry without a canopy, so the front door sits in shadow under timber rather than under an applied porch.

Planting is doing structural work here. The olives and grasses are what keep a two-storey mass from meeting the paving as a wall, and they are set close enough to the glass to be read from inside as part of the ground-floor plan.

The entry elevation from the drive, the timber upper storey cantilevered over a recessed glazed entrance, mature olive trees against stone paving. — PL. 01

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Ground floor

Inside, the ground floor is one room with the services pushed to a stone spine wall. The wall is the only heavy element on this level, and it carries the kitchen, the fireplace and the concealed doors, which is what allows the rest of the perimeter to be glass.

Sliding timber screens run outside that glass on the garden side. Closed, they return the elevation to the same vertical rhythm as the upper volume; open, they stack against the solid ends and the room extends onto the terrace.

The garden elevation with a large sliding timber screen pulled partly across the glazing, stone paving and a shallow water channel in the foreground. — PL. 03The screens are the elevation. Closed, the ground floor matches the cladding above it.

The living area against the stone spine wall, low linen seating, a solid timber coffee table and a row of pendant lights. — PL. 04

The dining table beside the open-tread stair, with full-height glazing to the terrace and the double-height void above. — PL. 05

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Upper floor

The stair is left open and set against the glass, so the double-height void reads from outside as the one place where the closed upper volume is cut through. It is the only interruption in the cantilever, and it is deliberate: it tells you where the section changes.

Bedrooms above are conventional in plan and unconventional in aspect. Each one takes a full bay of glazing on the long elevation, and the depth of the cantilever means none of them needs a blind at the hours anyone is in them.