Homes are often born from architects' sketches —a quick outline of a roofline or the way a wall meets the floor. But at Kanasu, the first drawings weren’t of these details. The client, an artist with a penchant for the untamed, sketched the landscape she wanted to see from her window—the plants that felt wild, the water body, the seating, and the boulders that mimicked the rugged terrain of Nandi Hills. “We were hesitant to ask Bijoy and Sunitha to build us a home here. But they instantly agreed,” the client says. “This site, particularly, offered an incredible opportunity to work with complicated conditions. When I first visited the site, I was dreaming of creating a pavilion and a platform to enjoy languid afternoons facing the Nandi Hills,” replies Bijoy Ramachandran, who founded Hundredhands, along with Sunitha Kondur. 

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Working with the site's natural rise and fall, the architects turned the steep grade into a sequence of arrival. There is no singular front door; instead, the house offers two ways to enter. One entry is a stroll through the garden. Starting at the gate, stone steps wind downward through the garden, leading one into the living room. The second entry is via the car porch, where a ramp carries you upward into the house. By refusing to flatten the site, the design ensures that every movement through the home is a physical engagement with the hill itself.

Once inside, the residence reveals its core: a double-height living and dining volume that serves as a spatial "crossroads." Positioned strategically between the main access road and a sprawling deck on the opposite side, this volume acts as a transparent lung. It breathes in the views from all cardinal points, ensuring that whether one is sipping tea or hosting a dinner, the presence of the Nandi Hills is an invited guest.

The spatial hierarchy is equally intriguing. The master bedroom occupies the upper reaches, acting as a private sanctuary that spills out onto a vast terrace. From here, the horizon feels within arm's reach. In a clever architectural trade-off, the son’s room is nestled into the lower level. While it foregoes the expansive vistas of the upper floors, it is compensated with an intimate, private garden—a quiet, grounded retreat that feels like a hidden glade.

The connectivity between these levels is not merely internal. A landscaped stone staircase winds its way outdoors, linking the lower-level deck to the master bedroom terrace. It is a rugged, external spine that encourages the inhabitants to move outside, blurring the line between the built environment and the hillside.

Perhaps the most poetic architectural gesture is the bridge that connects the daughter’s bedroom to the rest of the upper floor. Suspended over the double-height living area, the bridge is louvered toward the exterior facade and open to the interior, allowing for a constant visual dialogue with the family below.

The facade itself features a dramatic curved brick wall, designed specifically to frame the most iconic silhouettes of the hills. Through the louvered openings of the bridge, the landscape is edited and presented like a series of living paintings. The daughter’s room further extends this connection with a Juliet balcony, offering a playful perch to look down into the lower floors or out toward the yoga terrace.

The client's brief was unapologetically clear: “Simple, earthy, and grounded.” To achieve this, the architects curated a palette that feels as though it was harvested from the site itself. Natural stone and recycled wood form the tactile backbone of the interiors. Primarily, the leather-finish Kota stone underfoot offers a cool, matte texture that ages gracefully.

The exterior is defined by exposed brickwork, its warm hues designed to blend seamlessly with the surrounding landscape. The louvered screens—a signature element of the facade—were crafted from recycled wood. The process was one of artisanal rigor; the wood was dried and mocked up to perfect a mechanism that balances privacy, light filtration, and ventilation.

Landscape at Kanasu isn't an afterthought; it is the genesis. The use of stone in the landscape was the deliberate starting point. Madurai Gold stone was selected for its raw, golden-hued texture, emulating the natural rock outcroppings of the Nandi Hills. This choice ensures that the garden doesn't look like an insertion, but rather a continuation of the hill’s natural geology.

As you stand on the deck, looking out toward the horizon, the success of Kanasu becomes clear. It is a home that looks "carved out of the hills." With its structured, sophisticated interiors and its raw, rugged exterior, it situates itself perfectly in the interstitial space between man and nature. It is a testament to the fact that when we listen to the land, the land provides a home that is both a sanctuary and a spectacle.