In this Christmas issue, Architectural Digest India sets off for Alibag, where it discovers a sweeping weekend home, made in collaboration by two accomplished AD100 firms, Architecture BRIO and Kunal Maniar & Associates.
At first sight while driving up a slope the home seems resting on a mountainside. It gradually reveals its volume and scale, as the aged stonework rises high above like a chapel.
It is remarkable when the ideologies of the makers match and a vision is aligned. To not flatten vast expanses of land for construction but instead play so poetically with the contours of a site; to not give in to the temptation of putting glass and concrete boxes on hillsides; and to let it be a little wild, a bit of a jungle, with a trail going up and down and around. Architectural Digest ends the year with a solid, beautiful and respectful, architecturally strong project.
This cover story is classic AD: a considered point of view on architecture, nature, materiality, space, and a subtle, remote luxury.