The site sits on the edge of the Ganges at Rishikesh, a landscape of extraordinary presence, where the river is the fact from which everything else must follow. The brief was to design a luxury resort that could exist within this setting without diminishing it.
The approach was one of restraint: structures are low and horizontally resolved, materials are sourced locally and allowed to weather, and the relationship between inside and outside is maximised at every point. Rooms are oriented toward the river rather than toward each other. Landscape is not manicured but held loosely, so that the Himalayan vegetation is the primary experience rather than a backdrop.
The common spaces, dining, lounge, spa, are arranged to dissolve the boundary between shelter and riverbank. Stone, timber, and handmade tile are the primary materials throughout, handled with the same logic as a private house: deliberately, at human scale, without spectacle.
"The landscape here is too powerful to compete with. The only honest response is to open the building toward it completely."