Stonefold

Stonefold is a six-room retreat on a steep 30-cent plot at Santhanpara, in the hills of Idukki. Rather than levelling the slope, the design keeps it. The building settles into the hill on three levels, and one long clay-tiled roof rides over the upper two. From the private road it reads as a modest two-storey building under one long roof. The two pool villas, cut into the slope below, are seen properly only from the valley side.

Below the roof the walls are white plaster. Where the building meets the hill they turn to dark stone masonry, so the lower rooms look quarried out of the site rather than set on top of it. The two pool villas sit side by side at the lowest level. Each has a private pool, a pool deck and a sit-out, and each lies under a planted roof that becomes a garden for the floor above. Grass terraces step down between them towards the valley.

Built into the hill, not onto it.

Arrival is from a private road along the east boundary, past four car bays to a drop-off at the entry porch. Reception, Room 3, the kitchen and the staff rooms share this level with a covered court, a paved court and a timber pool deck holding an eight-metre pool, and a plunge pool is set into the lawn in front of the reception deck. From the covered court a red spiral stair climbs to a dining and play terrace at the end of the long verandah that serves Rooms 4, 5 and 6. Each of those rooms opens to its own balcony on the valley side.

Inside, the levels are kept simple. It is 3.8 metres floor to floor from the pool villas up to reception and 3.1 metres to the rooms above, and under the sloping roof the top-floor rooms rise from about 3.1 metres at the eaves wall to 4.7 metres at the ridge. Rainwater from the roofs is gathered in a 12,500-litre underground tank. Construction is due to begin shortly. The images here are design renders and presentation plans from the studio’s model.