The W.D. House is a mixed-use project in Delhi, a private residence above, a restaurant occupying the ground floor and garden. The challenge was to allow both programmes to coexist without either compromising the other: the residence needed to feel genuinely private and domestic; the restaurant needed to feel genuinely public and hospitable.
The solution lies in the section: the two programmes are stacked and separated by a planted terrace that acts as a buffer, visible from both levels but belonging to neither. The restaurant's entrance is distinct from the house's, and the garden is curated to feel more like a courtyard than a service space.
The interiors of the restaurant take the domestic logic of the house seriously rather than abandoning it at the threshold. Materials are warm and textured, handmade brick, terracotta, cane, chosen for their relationship to food, to ease, and to the experience of eating well in a room that has been thought about.
"A restaurant that feels like a house is a rarer thing than a house that feels like a restaurant. We were after the former."