This Family’s "Minimalist" Home Includes a Curlicue Window Seat and a Half-Ton Buddha

Sridhar Krishna had spent his entire life in the home that his father built in the 1970s on a corner plot in an eastern suburb of Bangalore, India. The home—a simple two-story, concrete-and-brick structure with a series of small commercial spaces on its ground floor—framed Sridhar’s childhood, teenage years, and even his early adulthood, as he continued to live there with his parents and two sisters. When his father died almost 30 years ago, Sridhar took on the role of managing the house and made several changes to the structure, including the addition of an extra floor.

But over time, his family expanded to include his wife, Padma, and their son and daughter, and the home started to feel smaller. By 2020, the couple were considering ways to upgrade their living situation. They imagined building a new house on the same plot to accommodate their family of four along with Sridhar’s mother. The area around the house had undergone considerable development, with new shops and apartments cropping up everywhere, which gave them an idea. Sridhar says that they thought of replacing the shops and offices in the old house with high-end commercial space on the ground floor of the new house, "which would support us financially." Still, deciding to tear down the home his father built was not easy for Sridhar, who says that the structure held "a lot of emotions in it. We had put a lot of time, effort, money, everything into the house," but ultimately, the need for more space won out.