Born from the shared histories of two people over seven decades, this house is a palimpsest of seven decades of gathered experiences and memories. Embracing Delhi’s long love affair with brick, it reimagines the material with a softer, sculptural touch. Made with seven craft communities, it celebrates the handmade with joy and humour, allowing stories to gather gently in every gesture of its making.
Design that brings efficiency to scale, and empathy to care.
100K Brick House
Trehan Family
Golflinks, New Delhi
2020
Built Up : 8,000 sqft
AT A GLANCE
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100,000
Clay bricks hand made in local kilns
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7
Craft communities in curated collaboration
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Embracing Delhi’s long love affair with brick, the house reimagines the material as a sculpted labyrinth – choreographing light, movement and an endless sense of discovery.
A lyrical home that is a construct of craft, culture, narrative and joy.
Spaces of this writer’s home are organized to connect and reconnect like a labyrinth. Creating the curiosity of the beyond and the feeling of an infinitive journey. Multiple staircases and a lift, connect the house in a way that evokes discovery.
The house is draped in a sculptural skin of handmade bricks. Placement of the brick registers the movement of the sun; bringing it alive with the changing shadows over the year. The sinuous skin makes room for plants to grow, water to trickle, windows to be sheltered and edges to be softened. As an element of surprise, poems are stone inlayed into the bricks.
Movements of the brick were sculpted by hand on a physical model and then translated into a parametric software. Each shifting brick was drawn course by course. This masonry endeavor, was built by the patient hands of experienced artisans. The average age of the masonry team being above 50.
FIG (O1)
Brick
Handmade bricks from Ludhiana form the sculpted exterior, laid by skilled masons working with geometric precision. Complex curves, shifting radii, and controlled tolerances elevate the brickwork from surface treatment to structural craft.
FIG (O2)
Wood
Timber frames openings and thresholds through intricate joinery and crafted geometries. Its inscriptions and detailing animate the spatial experience with warmth, tactility, and a calibrated rhythm.
FIG (O3)
Stained glass
Hand-cut and soldered stained glass panels, crafted over two years in a Mumbai studio, filter daylight through layered colour. Reclaimed glass fragments bring depth and variation, creating a chromatic, atmospheric register that evolves throughout the day.
FIG (O4)
Stone Inlay
In Agra, stone inlayers produced meticulously cut and set motifs for the floors. This enduring craft introduces fine-grained narratives and culturally resonant symbolism into contemporary spaces through precise, labour-intensive workmanship.
