South Indian coffee, Darjeeling tea or something else ?

Most houses are built in a specific style or based on a theme. Now that I had a site, I needed to progress my 'home in the hills' from an aspiration into an implementable concept.

Traditional South Indian style

I have always loved the traditional South Indian homes with their inner courtyards, raised verandahs and ornate pillars.

Ive also been a fan of the British colonial homes with high ceilings, pale coloured walls, dark wooden floors, deep verandahs, tall rounded windows and handi bell jar ceiling lights.

British Colonial style

My purchase agreement had a clause that required our home to have a sloping roof to align with the developer's balinese concept. With all of these ideas churning around in my head, I wasn't sure what theme to move ahead with.

Whatever theme I picked, it needed to work in the context of the unique aspects of my site - South Indian homes are inward focussed - the beauty of my site was in the views all around me. Similarly the colonial style home tends to be self sufficient rather than complementary to the landscape - I realised that both styles were elegant by themselves but wouldn't work for the site. I would need to look to the site itself to derive the theme for the home.

...The Farnsworth House

...Standing Out From The Crowd