Excerpt: A Home In The Sky, an interior design project by Madras Spaces, features an apartment conceived as a retreat of stillness rather than spectacle. Defined by restraint and material honesty, the design uses Kota stone, concrete, and natural teak to create a calm, tactile atmosphere. Every surface and detail sustains a sense of quiet balance, offering a spatial pause amid the city’s restless vertical rhythm.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] In the layered skyline of Chennai, where residential towers push above the urgency of daily life, Madras Spaces has crafted an apartment that offers something rare: stillness. High above the ground, this home is not a showcase of altitude or panoramic views—it is a retreat from them, a spatial pause in the city’s vertical rush.
The design began with a single question: What does calm feel like, far above a city that never stops? This inquiry guided every decision, shaping a space defined not by spectacle, but by sensation.
At its core lies leather-finished Kota stone—cool underfoot, muted in tone, and rich with fossilized traces. Applied across floors and key surfaces, the stone absorbs light, grounding the interiors in a quiet tactility. Natural concrete tiles wrap the walls, holding light rather than reflecting it. The exposed finish of ceiling and walls transforms construction marks—formwork lines, tonal gradations—into subtle narratives of time.
Natural teak punctuates the elemental palette, bringing warmth to thresholds, storage, and paneling. As it ages and deepens in tone, it softens the austerity of stone and concrete, creating balance rather than contrast.
There is no ornament, no flourish—only restraint. Every joint, line, and surface exists to sustain stillness. In a city where interior calm is often consumed by exterior chaos, this home draws a quiet boundary. It acknowledges its urban context, yet resists it—gently, persistently.
The result is a space that floats above the city yet feels anchored to the earth—textural, hushed, and complete.
Madras Spaces, led by Aswin Karthik and Abhijit Haridas, continues its exploration of architecture as an emotional landscape—where material, light, and rhythm conspire not merely to shelter, but to slow time itself.
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