Occasional writing on design, materials, and the homes we have been a part of. Published quietly, one essay each week.
Why the same premium studio would build very different homes in two Indian cities. Five materials, five reasons, one climate map.
Read essay → How a 5 BHK villa in Jubilee Hills came in dramatically under budget, why the client is our happiest, and the two decisions that made everything possible.
Read essay → The story behind our shift from Italian to Indian marble, the twelve quarries we visited, and why we now name every slab before it enters your home.
Read essay → A story from 2022 about a bookshelf, a client who nearly walked away, and what we learned about honesty on the sixth revision.
Read essay → Why the bathroom is where budget compromises hurt the longest, what to spend on, and what to skip — from someone who has redone eleven of them.
Read essay →
The unusual rule that shortens most projects by two weeks, prevents the majority of scope changes, and improves every final home.
Read essay → The ritual that begins every Sky Arc project. What we do in those two hours, why it changes everything that follows, and how you can steal it.
Read essay → A guide for anyone building a home in India while living outside the country. The three most common mistakes, and the six questions to bring to your first call.
Read essay →
The one paint decision most people get wrong, why it matters more than the colour, and the four sheens we specify by room.
Read essay → A line-by-line breakdown of what actually goes into a turnkey number, where the numbers are usually massaged, and how to read a quote you were given.
Read essay → The four decisions that separate a considered home from a spent-a-lot home. All four are invisible. All four are within your control.
Read essay → Seven questions that will separate a real practice from a picture-perfect Instagram feed. Sky Arc will fail two of them if you ask badly.
Read essay → A defence of the messy corner, the cluttered study, the untidy pantry. And why we design these rooms with the same care as the perfect ones.
Read essay → Where the money should actually go, and why a home's largest room should be the one where the family spends the most waking hours.
Read essay → The three-layer lighting method we have used for eleven years, the tools we choose, and why the ceiling should almost never be the source of light.
Read essay → Why the industry standard of flat drawings is quietly sabotaging your final home — and what we do differently.
Read essay → The maths of a small studio, the logic behind the six-per-year cap, and the three reasons we say no most often.
Read essay → There is one thing every high-end designer knows but few admit to clients. We are writing this to change that.
Read essay → A single sentence that shifts every client conversation. It is the reason we sometimes wait six weeks before beginning a design.
Read essay → On why the emptiness of a room, not its objects, is what makes it feel considered — and why we chase that emptiness harder than any material.
Read essay →