Villa Prakriti / unTAG

Prakriti, in Sanskrit, refers to "mother nature". Cradled amidst India's Sahyadri mountains, flanked by forest at its backside, while overlooking Mukane dam, Villa Prakriti is a quaint biophilic farm-house reciting the connect between humans and nature. This forested sanctuary seeks not to mimic nature, but to live in its likeness — to be adaptive, procreative, and rooted. A home that blends into its natural surroundings. The first seed of thought germinated under the existing lone mango tree, which formed the instinctual nucleus — the axis mundi. Traversing the home on a contoured topography becomes an act of choreography, negotiating levels, unravelling spaces. Instead of flattening the ground into terraces, the house treads gently along it — a minimal cut-fill philosophy respecting the natural gradient.