Architecture

You arrive expecting a hotel and find a village instead — stone paths, water you can hear before you see it, rooms tucked into the trees. Omak The Khaas is a 2.25-acre eco-resort outside Corbett where the luxury is everything that isn't there: no glass tower, no noise, no rush.

A young Gurgaon family wanted a house that would still feel like it belonged to them in forty years — and to their children after that. Kapoor House answers with the weight and calm of an English manor, built in Indian stone laid by hand.

A family with 4.4 acres of lawn wanted to live in the garden, not just look at it. This Noida farmhouse stretches low and long across the land, then dissolves its walls into glass so the lawn walks right up to the sofa.

On a highway, you have about three seconds to make a speeding family decide to stop. Highway Masala wins those three seconds with a burst of exaggerated Rajasthani colour you can read from a kilometre away — then gives them a meal worth pulling over for.

Government housing has a look, and everyone knows it: the endless grid of identical balconies. The brief for the Ministry of External Affairs was to break that grid on KG Marg and give India's diplomats an address with the dignity of their work — an Art Deco landmark, not a barracks.