A Home That Revisits Ahmedabad's Corbusian Era, within a modern High-Rise Apartment

 

How does one evoke the nostalgia of Corbusian Ahmedabad inside a high-rise apartment? NG Apartment by Studio Saransh, takes on this challenge by translating the architectural language of the city’s modernist past within the interior, capturing not just the bold rectilinear geometries of exposed bricks and concrete surfaces, but also their structural and elemental details, their ideologies and aesthetic sensibilities. The client, a true-blue Amdavadi, gave a clear mandate. “The space,” as Kaveesha Shah, Principal Interior Designer at Studio Saransh recalls, “should not feel like an apartment, but rather like a home, where the essence of modernist Ahmedabad lingers, in its materials, in its textures and the air.”   

Architects: Studio Saransh
Typology: Residential Interior
Location: Ahmedabad
Carpet Area: 250 sqm
Photographer: Ishita Sitwala

Sourcing 

Lighting: Associated Lighting, Plus Lighting, Trinity, Mianzi, Tectona Grandis Furniture
Stone & Marble: Jayantilal & Co.
Terrazzo: Bharat Floorings
Bricks: The Brick Store
Glass: Saint Gobain
Kitchen: Tiara
Furniture: Tectona Grandis Furniture, Amolakh, Studio Works
Rugs: Jaipur Rugs
Fans: Anemos

The design process began with a deliberate erasure. Standardized finishes and furnishes that the apartment came with, were stripped away to expose the raw surfaces. Only a few measured civil changes were made. “While the apartment came with a layout like any other flat,” explains Kaveesha, “we didn’t want to simply decorate it. We wanted to shift its nature entirely, through space and substance.” 

The layout of the home subtly resists the conventions of typical apartments. The entrance opens into the drawing room, while a long linear corridor connects this formal zone to the more private areas of the house. Four bedrooms line this passage—the guest room at the front, and the master bedroom at the rear. At the corridor’s end lies a lounge, created by repurposing an existing bedroom. The kitchen, placed adjacent to the drawing room, is separated by a translucent glass door bringing in light, while allowing privacy.

When one approaches the house, the memory of old Ahmedabad begins to take form. The main door is crafted from reclaimed Valsadi teak wood. Inside, the sense of nostalgia deepens through a palette of Brick-clad walls, exposed RCC ceiling and polished Kota stone flooring—materials typical of the city’s modernist era homes. A continuous wooden datum running along the walls, recalls the Corbusian affinity with proportion and order. It conceals electrical wiring, further reinforcing the home’s clean, and uncluttered visual rhythm. Lighting too, is quietly integrated into the space—hiding behind circular brass plates, or within thick suspended channels running across the room—ensuring that the materiality remains the focus. 

This quiet attention extends into the finer details of the house. For instance, all the door handles throughout the house evokes the silhouette of the iconic windows of Corbusier's famous Notre Dame du Haut. Furniture pieces, sourced from Tectona Grandis Furniture and Studio Works, continue the narrative with their mid-century modern geometries. At the heart of this room, a hinchko (swing), typical of traditional Gujarati homes, anchors the space, lending it a further touch of nostalgia. Even the corridor, often overlooked in most apartments, carries this sensibility forward. A brick vault spans across its ceiling, recalling the jack arches of Corbusier’s Sarabhai House. At both ends, mirrors reflect the curve of the ceiling creating an illusion of an “endless brick vault”. “It’s one of those things you don’t notice at first,” as Kaveesha rightly points out, “and then suddenly, you do.”

The corridor leads quietly to the bedrooms, arranged on either side. The master bedroom is anchored by a minimalist four-poster bed, capturing the subtle nostalgia of the past. While the material expression of the drawing room—exposed RCC, brick-clad walls, a horizontal timber channel, and suspended lighting conduits—continues in the room, the flooring takes on a more warmer tone with wood. 

The son’s bedroom, designed by himself, carries a sense of elegant impermanence. Aditya Ghiya introduces a unique layout breaking away from the typical bedroom. There is no wardrobe—instead, a bespoke library unit that lines the wall, accompanied by a low console specifically crafted to hold a suitcase. The bathroom is visually connected to the sleeping area. A solid wall connecting the two was replaced with a large glass opening, allowing light and a sense of expansiveness to flow between the two. Privacy, when needed, is afforded by sliding wooden shutters with operable louvres. The bedroom is furnished by Amolakh with mindful joinery using reclaimed teak.

The lounge marks a distinct departure from the material palette of the remaining house. It is designed to feel like an escape. Conceived as a retreat—a space where the family could unwind—it carries a more rustic, laid-back atmosphere. The flooring is cast-in-situ terrazzo, lending the space a handcrafted texture that feels grounded and cool. The walls are plastered with a stucco finish, rising uninterrupted to the ceiling, while the horizontal datum—so integral to the rest of the house—reappears here as a wooden fascia band at lintel level. Even the skirting has been reimagined: higher than usual and gently curved, it aligns with the brick-infused terrazzo that climbs toward the window ledge. Tucked away in a corner of the house, this room is designed like a den—an escape from the everyday. As Kaveesha puts it, “The idea is that when you enter this room, you feel like you’ve entered the weekend.”


NG Apartment is not a replica of Ahmedabad’s Corbusian era, nor is it a stylised homage. It is a reconstitution: a design that translates the memory into material, scale into intimacy, and ideology into details. “We weren’t chasing a style,” Kaveesha reflects, “we were chasing a feeling. And that feeling... it had to belong to the city.” There are no grand gestures here, just deliberate nods to the past remembered. The wooden handles, the vaulted corridor, the diffused light reflecting from the bare material palette, and carefully placed artworks—each of which belonged to the client’s personal collection. It is in these details that the design breaks away from its typology, and settles into something far rarer: a home that remembers where it came from.