Spaces Architects@ka Bends a Delhi House into Continuous Curves Shaped Around Commissioned Art

Few clients ask an architect for something "no one has ever seen before", and fewer architects take the request literally. With The Art House in Ashok Vihar, New Delhi, Spaces Architects@ka, led by principal architect Kapil Aggarwal, did exactly that. The firm delivered a 9,000 sq ft residence for a private entrepreneur in which the architecture, the sculptures, the murals, the furniture and the lighting were all made for this one house.

The originality brief is not the interesting part, since most "never seen before" houses end up looking like other houses. What stands out is the method. The curves start on the street facade and run inward into walls, ceilings and volumes. Those surfaces were shaped to receive specific art pieces rather than to frame them after the fact. Many of the curves were also marked out, tested and refined on site by hand, not just resolved on screen. That makes The Art House a test of whether a total design approach can hold together on a tight urban plot.

A Curved Street Front on a 240-Square-Yard Plot

The site measures just 240 square yards, so the house has to grow upward. It stacks its program into a layered volume. A curved overhanging roof, an oval skylight and terracotta screens soften what could have been a sheer wall. Trailing planters and palm fronds help as well. The facade is finished in micro-concrete by Colortale, which allows the bends to read as one continuous skin instead of a string of joints.

At dusk the building changes character. Recessed lights and a vertical light strip pull the stacked floors into a single glowing composition. On a dense Delhi street of flat-fronted plots, the curved canopy reads less as decoration and more as a declaration. You know from the gate that the inside will not be conventional.

Circulation Treated as Gallery

The strongest decision in the house is to treat corridors, stairs and double-height volumes as gallery space, not leftover space. The entry passage sets the tone. A black inlay line crosses the Italian marble floor toward a sculptural wall relief, and a glass-railed timber stair rises alongside it.

Inside the double-height living volume, a curved mezzanine balustrade traces an arc that echoes the carved circular relief on the far wall. Paper pendants hang in the void between them. On the upper landing, a large white dome pendant sits against a blue geometric mural. On a compact plot, the vertical void carries most of the spatial drama, so it is right that the art gathers there rather than being spread thinly across rooms.

Living and Dining at the Center

The main living level places dining at the center of the plan. The dining area works as the hinge between the lounge and the open Siematic kitchen. A glass-topped table with tan chairs sits in front of an arched kitchen opening, and a black steel staircase cuts through the background. The arch is a small move, but it carries the curved language from the facade into the most everyday part of the house.

The lounge is where the risk of excess is highest. A curved blue sofa, a red pendant, a wave-patterned white screen and a timber wall relief compete for attention. Sheer curtains and steady daylight hold the composition together. The palette stays restrained enough that the sculptural pieces read as anchors rather than clutter. We would call it maximal but edited, which is harder to achieve than it looks.

Bedrooms, Bar and Spa: The House After Dark

The private rooms carry the commissioned approach into more intimate scales. One bedroom pairs a line-drawn figure mural with a rust-pink armchair, a pivoting pendant and a blue headboard. Here the art is applied directly to the wall, so it is part of the room rather than hung in it.

The basement takes the idea furthest. Its bar and double-height lounge are built from niches, false-ceiling features and fitted furniture. A sculpted pale counter sits under glowing ribbon lights, beside a backlit oval shelf niche. Spaces below grade on dense plots often end up as storage or afterthoughts. Making this level the most theatrical room in the house is a smart inversion. Elsewhere, a sunken tub sits in a stone-clad room beneath a painted abstract ceiling. The ceiling does exactly what the brief asked of every surface: it hosts art.

Rooftops, Spiral Stairs and Outdoor Rooms

With almost no ground to spare, the outdoor life of the house moves to its terraces. An orange spiral steel stair links the upper levels. Perforated rust-toned timber columns, a pergola frame and potted bonsai give the roof the quality of a sculpture garden. Vines trailing from upper planters soften the curved glass balconies and tie the terraces back to the green edges of the street facade.

The sources describe no passive climate strategy, which is a notable gap for a Delhi house with this much glazing and roof exposure. The planting and overhangs may help in practice. Still, a project this committed to bespoke detail could have made shading and ventilation part of its sculptural vocabulary rather than leaving them unstated.

Plans and Drawings

The plans show how much is packed onto the plot. The basement holds the bar and lounge around a green courtyard cutout. The stilt level handles four parking bays, the entrance lobby and service rooms, with a void cut through it. The ground floor drawing shows dining, lounge, kitchen and two bedroom suites. The second floor repeats the bedroom pairing around a central lounge.

The upper drawings reveal a jacuzzi terrace with a lawn, then an upper roof with a glass structure, planting and a circular feature. A single lift core and the spiral stair thread every level together. This is what makes the gallery-like circulation possible: the vertical spine is fixed and compact, which frees the curved surfaces to do the expressive work.

Why This Project Matters

The Art House is a reminder that "bespoke" can be a building method, not just a finish schedule. Spaces Architects@ka shaped walls and ceilings to receive specific art. They also resolved many of the curves by hand on site, so craft carries more of the design than documentation does. For Indian residential practice, where skilled site labor is still available, that is a real and transferable lesson.

The house also carries the usual risks of total design. When every object is custom, rooms can tip into display. Here, the continuous curve and a disciplined palette largely keep that in check. Whether you read the result as a home or a private museum, it shows that a dense 240-square-yard Delhi plot can carry a genuinely singular architectural idea, if the architect commits to it from facade to fitting.

The Art House by Spaces Architects@ka (principal architect Kapil Aggarwal), Ashok Vihar, New Delhi, India. Built area: 9,000 sq ft (approx. 836 m²). Completed: 2026. Photography: Bharat Aggarwal.

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