Studio Meridian
Project 0412 · Drawing set A1
Kotagiri, The Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu
2024 · Completed March 2024
A permanent house for a family of four returning to the hills after twenty-two years in Singapore, on 952m² of a decommissioned tea estate. The brief asked for four bedrooms, a room that could hold thirty people, somewhere to work that was not a corner of a bedroom, and - stated first, before any of the rest - that the house should be usable during the monsoon rather than merely survived in.
three levels
28 × 34 m
one on the ground floor
+0.60 · +4.20 · +7.80
Design intent
Anaya Rao Kulkarni
Studio Meridian, 2024
The Nilgiris get 1,400mm of rain in four months and sit inside cloud for much of it. The instinct is to build tight and look out through glass. This house does the opposite: it opens a 7.3m volume in its centre, glazes it north with a clerestory, and lets the grey light in from above where it is even and constant, so the rooms do not go dark when the valley disappears.
The plan is one rectangle, 18.0 by 12.6 metres, and every wall lands on a 4.5-metre structural grid. Nothing is picturesque. The complexity is in the section, not the plan - three levels, a stair volume that runs the full height of the house, and a gallery that crosses the living room's air on two sides so the house is legible from inside itself. You always know where you are because you can see where you have been.
Materials were chosen for what they do in wet weather, not for how they photograph. Kota stone is leathered rather than polished because polished stone at 1,980 metres in July is a hazard. Brass is left unlacquered so it darkens where hands fall. The travertine runs from the living room to the south terrace with no threshold at all, which is either the most extravagant detail in the house or the only honest one, depending on the day.
The site fell 2.4 metres to the south-west and was not levelled. The garden steps down in three grass terraces retained by the same board-formed concrete as the house, so the shuttering pattern that begins in the entrance hall ends 15 metres away at the bottom of the garden.
Drawing 04 · Site and plot
The building sits 6.0m back from the estate road on the north and 15.4m clear of the southern boundary, which is what leaves room for the garden to step down 2.4m in three grass terraces.
Orientation
The long axis runs east–west so every principal room faces south to the valley and no room takes the low western sun on a glazed wall.
Parking
Carport on the north-east of the plot under a silver oak pergola, entered directly off the estate road.
Terraces, courts and garden
L0 · Honed travertine, continuous with the living room floor
Runs the full 13.5m of the living and dining rooms, 5.0m deep, held 600mm above the garden on a single travertine step that doubles as seating along its whole length.
L0 · Still water, 150mm deep, black Kota lining; silver oak deck edge
A 4.5 × 7.2m still-water court against the west wall. It reflects the board-formed concrete onto the media room ceiling in the late afternoon and cools the western air before it reaches the house.
L0 · Kota stone setts on a sand bed, open joints planted with moss
The arrival space between the carport and the front door, 9.0 × 4.5m, walled to the east by the kitchen and open to the tea slope on the north.
L0 · Kota stone
Bins, gas bank and the utility drying line, fully screened from the entrance court and the road by a 2.4m terracotta jaali wall.
L0 · Native grass terraces stepping down 2.4m across three levels
The site falls 2.4m to the south-west. Rather than level it, the garden is cut into three grass terraces retained by board-formed concrete walls that match the house, each 800mm high.
L1 · Kota stone on pedestals, leather finish
Cantilevers 3.0m clear of the building above the south terrace, off the primary bedroom's 4.2m sliding wall. No column under it.
L1 · Rough-sawn silver oak deck on a steel frame
1.8m deep off Bedroom 3, directly over the water court, with an oxidised brass balustrade at 1100mm.
Areas on this page are summed from the same room rectangles the plans are drawn from, so they cannot drift from the drawings. Built-up excludes the 43.2 m² void over the living room and every uncovered terrace. Completed March 2024.
Drawing 01–03 · Floor plans
Entry from the north, living to the south. The plan is a single 18.0 × 12.6m rectangle divided by a service band on the west and a double-height hall that carries the stair through all three levels.
Select any room to open its panel below. Walls are drawn at their true thickness - 300mm external, 150mm internal - and every dimension is measured off the same geometry the walkthrough is built from.
Drawing 06 · Interactive model
The geometry you move through is the geometry the plans are drawn from. Every wall is at its plan thickness, every doorway is a real gap you can pass through, and every ceiling is at the height the room schedule states - so the 2.85m bath and the 7.34m living room feel as different here as they do on the section.
Full-screen · WebGL · 3 levels
Enter the walkthrough.
A navigable interior on its own page. Move with WASD or the arrow keys, drag to look, and jump to any of the 11 rooms on this floor. The 3D engine loads only when you arrive, and is released when you leave.
Drawing 07 · Room schedule
Each perspective is constructed from that room's own clear dimensions, its ceiling height and the real openings in its walls, looking toward its principal aspect. The 1.70m figure is the same height in all of them.
The one room in the house with no view out to the valley. Glazing is held to a single west window onto the water court, so the room stays dim enough to use in daylight.
A 600mm slot window at 1.5m sill, high enough for privacy from the west court and low enough to throw evening light across the basin.
Full-height teak joinery on three sides. Wet-weather storage for a house that sits in cloud for four months of the year.
6.90m clear from the floor to the underside of the roof slab, and the only volume in the house that reaches all three levels. A 1.2m glazed slot runs the full height of the west wall beside the stair; on clear evenings it puts a single band of light on the concrete opposite.
The centre of the house and the reason for its section. The silver oak soffit follows the monopitch, so the room is 7.34m clear at the south wall and rises to 8.10m at the north, where a 1.2m clerestory sits above the roof terrace and washes the back wall with north light. Open to the upper gallery on two sides, with a 6.6m sliding wall to the south terrace that stacks fully into the return.
Deliberately low against the living room's 6.3m, and lit from two sides. The 3.6m cased opening between them has no door, so the drop in ceiling is the only thing separating the rooms.
Internal and top-lit by a 900mm rooflight over the shower, so the only daylight arrives straight down onto wet micro-cement.
North-facing onto the entrance court, which means even, shadowless light all day and no direct sun at any season. The only bedroom on the ground floor, and the only one reachable without the stair.
A 3.2m island in a single Kota slab, aligned with the 2.4m north window so whoever is working at it faces the tea slope rather than a wall. Doors to both the living room and the dining room, and a service door east to the pantry.
Given a real east window at 1.05m sill rather than a light well, and its own bathroom off the pantry. It gets the first sun in the house.
Cold store, second sink and the service door to the north-east court, screened from the road by a full jaali panel.
Drawings 05, 09–16 · Elevations, sections, studies
The four elevations and both sections are constructed from the same room rectangles, wall runs and openings as the floor plans. Move a window in the model and it moves in all seven drawings at once.
Drawing 08 · Material palette
Nothing here is a swatch. Each study is drawn at the material's real unit size - 150mm shuttering boards, 900 × 600 travertine, the 200mm jaali module - and every entry lists the rooms it actually lands in. Select a room name to open it.
Ground floor external walls, entrance hall to full height, stair spine
Cast in situ, 150mm silver oak shuttering boards, reused four times
The boards were laid horizontally and left unfilled, so the grain and the tie holes stay legible. The entrance hall reads as one continuous pour from plinth to roof light.
Where it lands
Ground floor slab throughout, continuing without a threshold onto the south terrace
Sira beige, cross-cut, honed to 400 grit, 900 × 600 × 20mm
The same stone runs inside and out. The only change at the glazing line is a 12mm shadow gap; there is no step, no strip, no lipping.
Where it lands
All window and door frames, primary bedroom floor, kitchen and library joinery
Salvaged from three demolished Ooty bungalows, 1920s–1940s stock
Left unstained and finished with hardwax oil, so the boards keep their variation. Frames are 90mm sections with a 6mm reveal to the plaster.
Where it lands
Kitchen and pantry counters, utility and service floors, roof terrace paving
Blue-grey Kota limestone, quarried Ramganjmandi, 30mm
Leathered rather than polished so it holds grip when the monsoon drives across the roof terrace. Counters are a single 3.2m slab with a 20mm eased arris.
Where it lands
All internal walls and soffits on the upper floor
Three-coat lime putty, local river sand, burnished by hand
Tinted with a trace of the site's own laterite so the white carries warmth in the long grey light of the monsoon months.
Where it lands
Service court screen, roof terrace pergola infill, stair hall west slot
Hand-pressed and wood-fired, 30km down the ghat at Mettupalayam
One module, 200 × 200 × 90mm, laid in two rotations. The screen reads solid from the road and dissolves completely from inside.
Where it lands
All door and window hardware, stair balustrade uprights, light fittings
Cast and hand-finished in Kumbakonam, left unlacquered
Unlacquered, so the balustrade darkens where hands fall and stays bright everywhere else. The stair records its own use.
Where it lands
All bathroom floors, walls and shower trays, seamless
Two-part polymer-modified cement, 3mm, sealed matt
No tile, no grout, no junction. Falls are formed in the screed beneath so the finished surface is one continuous plane into the drain.
Where it lands
Living room ceiling battens, pergola beams, west court decking
Grevillea robusta, felled from the estate's own shade trees
The tree that shaded the tea now spans the living room. Battens run north-south at 90mm centres, following the fall of the monopitch roof.
Where it lands
Upper floor circulation, gallery, bridge and stair treads
In-situ poured, grey-green marble chip, 12mm aggregate, ground on site
The chip is the same stone as the Kota counters, crushed. Ground and sealed after the balustrade was fixed so the terrazzo runs tight to the brass.
Where it lands