Sakshi Asthana · Architect & Interior Designer · Kanpur
I practise design-build residential architecture — architecture, structure, services and interiors resolved at one desk, and carried from the first working drawing to the last coat of polish.
The approach
Most projects lose their design between the architect's drawing and the contractor's site. I removed that gap: I design, engineer, document and supervise construction — so the detail that was drawn is the detail that gets built, and one person answers for the whole house.
Concept to working drawings — plans, elevations, sections and site supervision, documented in dual units (imperial and metric).
Structural planning integrated with the architecture from day one — columns, beams and slabs placed to serve the spaces, not fight them.
Electrical, plumbing and ceiling-services layouts drawn to the same rigour as the architecture — every light point and pipe run on a sheet.
Millwork elevations, false-ceiling design, stonework and material palettes — detailed to the half inch and built under my own site supervision.
Flagship project · Case study
The residence is organised around a double-height lobby — a 4.6 × 9.4 metre volume at the centre of the first floor, wrapped by a gallery on all four sides and crowned with coffered, cove-lit ceilings. Ivory marble floors with hand-set black inlay borders run through the public rooms; a diamond-pattern medallion floor anchors the space below the void.
The ground floor carries the social programme — drawing room, formal dining for twelve, bar lounge, a planted courtyard at the heart of the plan, and a family lounge of nearly nine metres square opening to the pool terrace. Upstairs, six suites each take their own dressing room and bath, and the terrace level holds a gym, spa and massage suite under a bamboo-roofed pergola.
Every trade on the project — structure, electrical, plumbing, ceiling work, stonework, wrought iron and millwork — was documented on its own sheet series, and executed under the same supervision: mine.
The proof
Any portfolio can show a finished photograph. I put the working drawing beside it — the same scroll, the same coffer, the same niche — because the measure of a design-build architect is how little is lost in between.
Scroll-motif panels drawn at 2'-10" (864 mm) rail height, set out bay by bay around the void and along the stair — then forged, finished dark, and capped with a walnut handrail. The drawing's rhythm of pattern-panel and plain baluster is exactly what the camera finds on site.
Sheet K/5 sets out the coffer grid over the family living and lounge — curtain trenches at the glazing, moulding profiles drawn at 1:4, beam and girder depths reconciled with the structure. On site the grid reads precisely as drawn, washed in a continuous warm cove.
A nine-metre-high boundary wall turned into the terrace's best feature: brick-clad, scattered with arched lamp niches drawn one by one on sheet E/12, with a steel-framed vertical garden alongside. At night every niche glows — an elevation drawing you can photograph.
The documentation
Eleven sheet series — working plans to kitchen details — issued in feet-and-inches and maintained in metric. Three of the furniture-layout sheets, with the programme they carry:
Arrival through a spiral-stair foyer into a nine-metre drawing room; dining, bar lounge and family lounge arranged around a planted courtyard; the kitchen wing and puja room to the west; pool and lawn wrapping the east boundary.
Six bedroom suites — each with dressing and bath — arranged around the double-height void, with two TV lounges, a pantry, and a terrace off the master wing. The gallery rail keeps every room a few steps from the heart of the house.
A private club on the roof: gym and spa with massage room under a bamboo-roofed pergola, staff quarters tucked behind, and a skylight dropping daylight into the dressing room below.
Materials & millwork
On site
Finishing stage, 2026 — the facade's cornice lighting on trial while the scaffold is still up. The site team executes; the sign-off stays with me — nothing on this facade is approved until it matches sheet E/12, and I drew sheet E/12.