Villa
Light Well
A weekend house that is empty five days a week and full on the sixth.
- Where
- Alibaug
- Carpet area
- 3,200 sq ft
- On site
- 34 weeks
- Finish level
- Bespoke
The brief
A house for eleven people on a Saturday and nobody on a Wednesday, that does not feel like a hotel either way.
The hard part
Three hours from the studio, coastal salt air, and a monsoon that took eight working weeks out of the programme.
What changed
It closes down to two rooms for a couple and opens to sleep eleven, without any part feeling shut off.
The decisions
Three moves did
most of the work
01
Designed for the empty version first
Most weekend houses are designed for the full house and feel abandoned the rest of the time. We did it the other way round.
02
Coastal-grade or deliberately replaceable
Salt destroys ordinary hardware in two seasons. Marine-grade where it is fixed, cheap and swappable where it is not.
03
One courtyard doing the cooling
The plan wraps a planted well. It moves air through the house, so the fans run instead of the compressors.
Before and after
The same room,
eight months apart
The rooms
Photographed a year
after handover
Specified
Every finish, named
The written specification runs to eleven pages. This is the part of it you can see from the door.
- Lime washInterior and exterior, breathable#E3DCCE
- Kota stoneAll ground floors, honed#5E6157
- Local hardwoodShutters and pergola#8A5A34
- TerracottaRoof and the courtyard planters#B05C3B
Something like this,
in your flat?
Send us the floor plan and the two things that annoy you most about the space. We will tell you honestly what it would take.