Summer is kind to this holiday home in Chandigarh amidst an orchard of mangoes

Across the planned city of Chandigarh—built by celebrated Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier soon after India’s partition—its striking buildings and structures are renowned for its rich architectural history and green spaces. The House of Mango Shadows, designed as a sensory experience to celebrate the dialogue between human habitation and the natural world, stands as a testament to the city’s commitment to integrating architecture seamlessly with nature.

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To create a seamless indoor-outdoor experience, Saurabh explains how the team decided to “work our way around the existing trees without having to cut even a single one. Each tree was planted equidistantly within a 40-metre grid, but there was a small patch of vacant land in between. We placed a major chunk of the common spaces here, with the private rooms branching out from this central area, forming courtyards centred around trees. In order to keep the serenity of the site intact, we planned very minimal landscaping here. Organic clusters of low height plants, such as ficuses, areca palms, canna lilies and dracene were planted around the existing trees to highlight pathways and the built structure.” To camouflage with the surroundings, strategic floor-to-ceiling openings have been incorporated into each wall to look out into the verdant outdoors, softening the architectural boundaries fluently.