Uday Gupta and his family like to call it a farmhouse, but their accessory dwelling in a dense residential neighborhood of Gwalior, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, is really more of a garden oasis five minutes from their home.

“The idea was to have a very seamless connection to nature because the existing landscape was already lush, and it had beautiful trees,” says architect Dheeraj Bajaj of Studio Dashline. “We never wanted to extend our footprint out of the boundaries which were already there.”

On a typical day, Uday’s extended family and friends gather there in the mornings and evenings to take dips in the pool, pick fruits and vegetables, and enjoy nature. “It’s a nice place to sit, a place to have a steam bath after workouts, a nice place to be around,” he says of the structure, which is situated on a plot of land the family has used for soccer matches and recreational activities for the last 40 years.

Uday runs an aluminum manufacturing company and leads an extremely active lifestyle. During the design phase, he was preparing for an ironman competition and he discovered that an endless pool (which creates a current to allow one to swim in place) would offer a compact solution for swim training. Thus the pool and the vegetable garden outside the bamboo pergola deck became defining elements in the design.

An elliptical window above the pool projects a ring of sunlight into the courtyard that slowly travels across the space as if to track the passage of time—and it also offers a stargazing aperture during nighttime swims. Another round portal opens the pool to the kitchen, where Uday’s wife, Purva, often prepares meals and catches up with his parents, who also live nearby. “In the kitchen, you have a good view to the pool area aligned with the elliptical skylight,” Bajaj says. “We wanted to frame that view.”

A living room mural by artist Priyanka Thaker of House of Berserk evokes the family’s own stories—and some of their favorite motifs like giraffes and frogs. “We wanted to do something on that wall which would highlight the quirkiness and the fun that we were all having during this process,” Bajaj says.

Gwalior is one of the oldest cities in India, with an extraordinary defensive fort dating from the 10th century. Princely palaces and Jain monuments constructed from local sandstone form a rich part of fabric of the city. Studio Dashline relished the chance to playfully weave in regional materials like the stone lintels and chevron-patterned floors, teak woodwork, and furniture by local designers. They mixed these more traditional elements with contemporary flourishes like a protruding red metal bay window overlooking the bamboo-shaded deck.

“Everyone is trying to be very local in terms of their practices,” Bajaj says of the burgeoning contemporary architecture scene in India. “Everyone is trying to contemporize their own place, and we have created something which is very local to Gwalior.”

Related Reading:

A Ribbon of Red Seating Ties Together a Sublime Concrete Home in India

Two Shipping Container Homes Trace the Edges of a Nature Preserve in India

This Home in India Takes the Arched Doorway Trend Past the Threshold

Project Credits:

Architects: Dheeraj Bajaj, Pranav Dakoria, and Shriya Sohi, Studio Dashline / @studiodashline

Mural: House of Berserk

Lighting Designer: Shivum Gupta, Enlighten Design

Furniture: Magari

Photographer: Yash R Jain