LB 21 SPASM parikrama house, is the twenty first title from LONG BOOKS COLLECTION.

Tucked between a lush hillside on one side and swaying palms on the other lies a home where the rhythm of the tropics dances with the linearity of design. This is a dwelling of glass and granite, deeply rooted in its surroundings yet incredibly modern, both in form and function.

This creature of stone and glass has a presence like a Brutalist structure that has been softened with the refinement of contemporary minimalism; it’s a straight-lined monolith but it treads ever so lightly and surreptitiously on the ground.

Perhaps because a majority of its insides is air. The 150 x 30 ft home is a series of rooms stacked in front of each other in a line, with large, imposing floor-to-ceiling glass windows acting as sliding walls on opposite sides. Surrounded by wide verandas and shielded with a light as paper Zinc roof, it is a house that not only responds to its environment but also engages in a meaningful dialogue with it, embodying the very essence of tropical living.

In addition to the site that only allowed for a linear plot (to keep all the palm trees intact), the glass walls were a key protagonist in the home’s design drama. 20mm thick, self- cleaning, and going up to a height of over 4.2 meters in some areas, the linearity of the home was in response to the motion of these windows.

Architecturally, the house adopts a unique approach, Sangeeta and Sanjeev liken this build to a “double-headed snake” with the two ends of the structure rising taller than the middle rooms. The elevation isn’t a mere stylistic choice but serves another purpose too, like everything else in this home. The far ends are the living rooms designed as viewing, vantage points looking out to the world - with its three retractable glass walls and elevation - while the middle rooms are the more nestled, private zones. (…)