REFRAMING THE CODE
National Media Centre, Gurgaon
Reframing the Code is an exploration of continuity across time – two adjoining residences designed for the same family, conceived nearly four years apart within the tightly regulated urban fabric of National Media Centre, Gurgaon.
The first residence was designed within the established architectural language and façade controls of the neighbourhood, responding closely to the prevailing residential character of the area. Built as a conventional family home, the architecture balances familiarity, proportion and restraint through a material palette rooted in exposed brick, textured surfaces and controlled openings.
Completed several years later, the second residence reinterprets the same vocabulary through a more open and introspective spatial idea. While the materiality maintains continuity with the earlier home, the architecture begins to question and loosen the rigidity of the surrounding code – creating a lighter, more porous environment organised around landscape, light and informal occupation.
Conceived less as a conventional residence and more as a living hall for reflection and ideation, the second home accommodates the evolving lifestyle of its owner – an author and thinker whose daily routines revolve around reading, writing and conversation. Greens at both the front and rear dissolve the boundaries of the built form, allowing the house to breathe through light, air and layered visual connections.
A compact studio apartment on the upper level accommodates the client’s newly married son, creating a quieter secondary layer of occupation above the more open social spaces below.
Together, the two homes form a dialogue between compliance and reinterpretation – an architectural study of how familiar rules can be revisited, softened and rewritten over time without losing continuity with their context.
Typology
Private Residences
Scope
Architecture + Interior Design
Status
House I – Completed 2021
House II – Completed 2025
Site Area
400 sq. yds.
Built-Up Area
6,000 sq.ft.
Photography
Suryan / Lokesh Dang