Client Brief: The brief was to create a residence that stood out for its personal identity while providing the inhabitants with a micro-environment to live in and keeping them away from the peeping Toms and overly curious neighbours.
Concept Note: The Three Musketeers Villa is an ongoing project for a large family home of three brothers living in Ludhiana. The villa has been conceptualized with the intent to create a sense of enclosure for privacy while providing the residents with moments of discovery and togetherness in a sustained micro-environment.
Design Process: True to its name, The Three Musketeers Villa has been designed to suit the individual identity and requirements of the three respective owners—a place to live and recount their adventures in life with family. The villa looks like one big project from the outside but in essence, no two villas are the same. The central villa which acts as the crown is a G+2 unit and is linear in structure as opposed to the other two which are G+1 units. The planning focuses on fulfilling the needs of connection and privacy across all generations within the family. To achieve the same the parents’ rooms are located on the lower level and the kids’ rooms are located on the upper level.
The three villas sprawl an area of 2500 sq. yards with a big garden in the centre for social gatherings. Rooted in the Indian cultural context, a temple located outside welcomes visitors and family members alike upon arrival and departure throughout the day. The concept of minimalism finds expression in the clean material palette of the villa. The grey Basalt cladding on the ground floor and the Corten steel fins bind the three villas together in an aesthetic melody—lending a seamless, modern visual language to the building. Two majestic cuboidal cantilevers of dimensions 21’ x 16’ and 19’6” x 32’ house a gym and a bedroom in the first and the third villa respectively.
The villa has been designed to infuse moments of privacy and togetherness with a focus on creating a micro-environment. The stony gabion wall forms the boundary of the built mass and offers protection from the trespassers and acts as a symbiotic host to strategically placed seasonal flora and fauna. Visible from all three villas is a Vastu-conforming central water body that helps in maintaining the temperature inside the periphery while also intervening as a centrepiece for all social gatherings. The rotatable corten steel fins are equipped with solar sensors and shade the mass of the building—acting as a heat barrier and providing much-needed respite from the hot climate of the city. The driveway cuts through the green landscape with its quartzite stone flooring and accents of brass cobbles.
The Three Musketeers Villa is an ode to the rich culture of family living and generational values—a home that evokes emotions and creates memories through well-planned spaces. Equipped with common gathering spaces for the family, the villa is a balance of privacy and togetherness—it is a connection in a seemingly disconnected society.
