Architect Apoorva Shroff knows who should be the main character in your home

For city dwellers who seek to create the perfect holiday home in the middle of nature, Shroff has an important tip. “My biggest advice is to respect nature. Do not go against it. Study the context of the space in which you build, ”she says. “If it’s a mountain, don’t excavate it more than necessary. Terrace it gently. Work with the slopes that the site has given you. You can go to the top of a mountain and flatten it and build a large fatty house, but when you work with nature, you will understand how it protects you back and supports the way you feel in your home.” Passionately, Shroff postulates how deractive trees can loosen the floor on which your house is built, leading the ground to collapse. On the contrary, if your house is placed around the trees, you have a better understanding of maintenance and drainage problems.

Practitioner, she concedes, is most people do not consider when building their dream house. “You are so engulfed in luxury and desires on your list of wishes that you forget that you must think of little things,” she notes. “Like the segregation of your public, private and service, plan ventilation, plan overhangs if your second house is in a mountain station. You have to think from a practical point of view before thinking of frills and aesthetics. ” Shroff encourages the search for inspiration in travel: think of the vibrant colors of houses on the sides of Guanajuato, courses present in Roman houses or jharokhas in Moghole architecture. “Everything you are looking for is at a certain level to emulate what you have already seen. Whether it is a mosaic, a swimming pool, how someone uses bricks, their grids, the patterns, the arches. A walk through a path away from you can be all the inspiration you need.”