Sanjeev Mohanty Residence

The brief

Shri Sanjeev Mohanty's brief was modest and demanding at the same time: a home for a small family that feels cosy rather than cramped, and that works on an ordinary weekday morning when everyone needs the same three metres of floor at once.

The constraint

Compact homes fail in predictable ways. Circulation eats the plan; storage arrives as furniture bought later and parked wherever it fits; and every room ends up doing one job badly instead of two jobs well.

The constraint here was not budget or taste but plain area — which meant the design had to be decided at the planning stage, not rescued at the decoration stage.

What we did

We started from how the family moves through a day rather than from a room list, and planned so that the busiest half hour of the morning has clear paths through it. Circulation was folded into rooms where it could be, rather than given corridors of its own.

Storage was designed in from the beginning and built full height, because in a small home the volume above eye level is the only spare capacity there is. Where a piece of furniture could do two jobs, it was drawn to do two jobs.

The palette stays light and consistent between rooms. Changing finishes at every doorway visually chops a small home into smaller pieces; carrying one palette through makes the whole flat read as a single volume.

The result

Every corner has a purpose, and the home reads as cosy by intention rather than small by accident. The family got a plan that holds up on an ordinary weekday, which is the only real test a home has.