FRONTAGE
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Rai House, on approach, is shielded in simple volumes that create privacy from the dusty street, and peel away on approach to reveal a textured entry full of greenery, with screening, oblique sightlines to and from the house, and the shadowy depth of an undercroft porch helping to bridge the tension between privacy and welcome, as often experienced in small neighbourhoods and tight lots within the Kathmandu valley.
GARDEN
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Within its street wall, and through a deliberate sequence of spaces from entry to living areas, Rai House opens generously to a sunny south-western aspect, ideal for a small garden retreat to provide a sanctuary for the family that encloses a safe place for growing children to play, and quietude for family elders to enjoy.
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"What meant the most to us was how naturally the house connects with its surroundings. The sun moves through the space with us—from morning to evening—and there’s always fresh air flowing through, making it feel open and alive. The indoors and outdoors blend so well that we often forget we’re inside. It’s comfortable, familiar, and makes us feel at home in every sense." ~ The Rais
HALLWAY
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Bedrooms are accessed along a hyper-private upper level hallway illuminated by a skylight that breaks the long corridor open to the sky, pulling daylight indoors, onto a textured internal wall. The axial planning of public and private layering maintains a deliberate approach to personal spaces, yet places the outlook of all bedrooms and suites towards the garden, ensuring visual connectivity to greenery and gathering spaces from every room.
LAYERS OF ENGAGEMENT
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We approached the design of Rai House, mindful of the layers of privacy that an intergenerational family home within a close-knit community requires. With a strong boundary presence and frontage mediating privacy and access between the house and its neighbours, a line of sight is deliberately drawn from the family area to the street, as a means to maintain visual engagement with the neighbourhood, yet provide a robust layer of privacy for the family.
MOTION
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The house is designed to be experienced as a sequence of spaces : it fans towards the private family zones from the pinch-point of its public interface with the neighbourhood and street, and engages along the entry-to-living spine across a gallery space with access to its protective axis of private rooms overlooking the garden refuge and valley beyond.
WARM, WET SUMMERS
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Kathmandu's subtropical climate, in spite of its altitude and distant snow capped mountains, does mean that the valley and its surrounds gets hot and sticky in the summer. Rai House is designed to leverage passive cooling as the sun warms up the central atrium, creating a thermal stack effect. Operable windows left open allow warm air to escape and cool air to be drawn in from the shady north-facing planting beds and raingardens.
COLD, DRY WINTERS
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In the winter, when temperatures drop, the same atrium lanterns welcome the warming sun, and the windows are closed to contain warm air within, benefitting living spaces with solar heat capture that circulates warmth throughout the house.
PROGRESS
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The completed house is now home to its happy owners and they have chosen to call it Saimo Khim, meaning "dream house" in the Rai language. Between design and delivery, and episodes of landslides that occurred near the boundary of the site, decisions were made to level much of the sloping terrain, creating an undercroft for an extra living area that now expands the ground floor bedrooms into a separate apartment and garden suites for the multi-generational family to grow into and enjoy for years to come.
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"The house has offered a sense of peace and grounding we didn’t even know we needed. The natural light, open gathering spaces, and intimate corners have brought ease into our daily routines. It feels like the house breathes with us—supporting rest, creativity, and connection in ways we never expected." ~ The Rais
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We honour their stories, kinship practices, and enduring connection to Country and Ancestral knowledge systems, and commit to designing in right relation, and in kind.
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